all, a slight one-sidedness,--perhaps a natural reaction from the
one-sidedness of those injudicious reformers who allow themselves to speak
slightingly of "the merely animal function of child-bearing." Higher than
either--wiser than both put together--is that noble statement with which
Jean Paul begins his fine essay on the education of girls in "Levana."
"Before being a wife or mother, one is a human being; and neither motherly
nor wifely destination can overbalance or replace the human, but must
become its means, not end. As above the poet, the painter, or the hero, so
above the mother, does the human being rise preëminent."

Here is sure anchorage. We can hold to this. And, fortunately, all the
analogies of nature sustain this position. Throughout nature the laws of
sex rule everywhere; but they rule a kingdom of their own, always
subordinate to the greater kingdom of the vital functions. Every
creature, male or female, finds in its sexual relations only a
subordinate part of its existence. The need of food, the need of
exercise, the joy of living, these come first, and absorb the bulk of
its life, whether the individual be male or female. This _Antiope_
butterfly, that flits at this moment past my window,--the first of the
season,--spends almost all its existence in a form where the distinction
of sex lies dormant: a few days, I might almost say a few hours,
comprise its whole sexual consciousness, and the majority of its race
die before reaching that epoch. The law of sex is written absolutely
through the whole insect world. Yet everywhere it is written as a
secondary and subordinate law. The life which is common to the sexes is
the principal life; the life which each sex leads, "as such," is a minor
and subordinate thing.

The same rule pervades nature. Two riders pass down the street before my
window. One rides a horse, the other a mare. The animals were perhaps