ing its
importance in conduct and in the formation of ideals long before the
marriage age, we are justified in discussing the maternal instinct here
instead of postponing it, as some might argue, until after we have
discussed marriage. There is nothing which I wish to assert more
strongly than that we are radically wrong in this postponement, which is
indeed our customary practice. Partly because we are blind, partly
because of our most imprudent prudery, we ignore and pervert the due
sequence of development, but here I deliberately prefer to follow the
indications of nature, and to discuss the maternal instinct now because,
in the matter of the education of girls, this is precisely the most
important subject that can be named.

Let us now note some popular misconceptions which cumber our minds and
often interfere with the work of the reformer.

To begin with what is perhaps the oldest of these, though indeed
scarcely entitled to the appellation of popular, let us assure ourselves
once and for all that we are talking about a fact natural, innate, not
acquired. The modern criticism of ancient notions of human nature, such
as those expressed in the theologians' conception of "conscience," has
inclined some to the view that our best feelings are indeed not at all
innate. No one can for a moment analyze conscience without observing the
immense disparity between the facts and the theologians' theory. And
thus we are apt to fall into the opposite error of supposing that our
impulses towards good action are entirely the products of education,
training, public opinion, and so forth. Let the reader refer, for
instance, to such a celebrated work as John Stuart Mill's
"Utilitarianism," and it will be seen how wide of the mark it was
possible for even a great thinker to go, when his ideas of mind were
unguided by the light of evolution. Even in the greatest writer of that
time not a syllable do we find as to the parental instinct. "As is my
own belief," says Mill, "the moral feelings are not innate but
acquired." Yet we have seen convincing evidence which teaches us that
the moral feelings spring essentially from the root of the parental
instinct, without which mankind could not continue for another
generation, and than which there is nothing more fundamental and
essential in any type of human nature that can persist.

The importance of noting this can be clearly stated. We are here dealing
with something which is not for us to