of their husbands and the truly filial love of their children and
the respect of all the world. Child-birth will be easy and will
leave no ill-results, their health will be strong and vigorous, and
they will see their daughters follow their example, and find that
example quoted as a pattern to others.

No mother, no child; their duties are reciprocal, and when ill done
by the one they will be neglected by the other. The child should
love his mother before he knows what he owes her. If the voice of
instinct is not strengthened by habit it soon dies, the heart is
still-born. From the outset we have strayed from the path of nature.

There is another by-way which may tempt our feet from the path of
nature. The mother may lavish excessive care on her child instead
of neglecting him; she may make an idol of him; she may develop
and increase his weakness to prevent him feeling it; she wards
off every painful experience in the hope of withdrawing him from
the power of nature, and fails to realise that for every trifling
ill from which she preserves him the future holds in store many
accidents and dangers, and that it is a cruel kindness to prolong
the child's weakness when the grown man must bear fatigue.

Thetis, so the story goes, plunged her son in the waters of Styx to
make him invulnerable. The truth of this allegory is apparent. The
cruel mothers I speak of do otherwise; they plunge their children
into softness, and they are preparing suffering for them, they open
the way to every kind of ill, which their children will not fail
to experience after they grow up.

Fix your eyes on nature, follow the path traced by her. She keeps