rs if not in women, who as mothers and teachers may
put my idea in execution? Only intellectually active women can and
will do it. But if these are to be loaded with the ballast of dead
knowledge that can take no root in the unprepared ground, if the
fountains of their own original life are to be choked up with it, they
will not follow my direction nor understand the call of the time for
the new task of their sex, but will seek satisfaction in empty
superficiality.

To learn to comprehend nature in the child,--is not that to comprehend
one's own nature and the nature of mankind? And in this comprehension
is there not involved a certain degree of comprehension of all things
else? Women cannot learn and take into themselves anything higher and
more comprehensive. It should therefore at least be the beginning,
and the love of childhood should be awakened in the mind (and in a
wider sense, this is the love of humanity), so that a new, free
generation of men can grow up by right care.

EVOLUTION

From 'The Mottoes and Commentaries of Mother-Play.' Copyright 1895, by
D. Appleton & Co.

What shall we learn from our yearning look into the heart of the
flower and the eye of the child? This truth: Whatever develops, be it
into flower or tree or man, is from the beginning implicitly that
which it has the power to become. The possibility of perfect manhood
is what you read in your child's eye, just as the perfect flower is
prophesied in the bud, or the giant oak in the tiny acorn. A
presentiment that the ideal or generic human being slumbers, dreams,
stirs in your unconscious infant--this it is, O mother, which
transfigures you as you gaze upon him. Strive to define to yourself
what is that generic ideal which is wrapped up in your child. Surely,
as _your_ child--or in other words, as child of man--he is destined to
live in the past and future as well as in the present. His earthly
being implies a past heaven; his birth makes a present heaven; in his
soul he holds a future heaven. This threefold heaven, which you also
bear within you, shines out on you through your child's eyes.

The beast lives only in the present. Of past and future he knows
naught. But to man belong not only the present, but also the future
and the past. His thought pierces the heaven of the future, and hope
is born. He learns that all human life is one life; that all human
joys and sorrows are his joys and sorrows, and through participation
enter