the Middle West; a large increase of the Democratic vote in the states where the governorship contests were fierce;1 and a general total larger than

ever.

Artemus Ward, in his famous lecture on the Mormons, used to tell his London hearers that the greatest British artists came by night, bringing lanterns, to see his pictures; and that when they saw them they said they never saw anything like them before - and hoped they never should again.

1 In the four states of New York, Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana, the Republican majority was 830,000 in 1904, and only 462,000 in 1908. Of the 368,000 loss, 329,000 represented an increase of the Democratic vote, which was, nevertheless, 7,000 less than in 1900.

Most of us would like to employ language something like that to express our opinion of the current presidential canvass. Certainly we never saw or heard of one in the slightest degree resembling it.

In the words of the sporting editor all records have been broken, and we may almost say that all the traditions and conventions of political campaigns and of political conduct have been affronted, if not violated. That being the case, it is somewhat late to consider whether the superstitions and traditions of a hundred or more years are to stand, in the result in November. All we can do is, to use the phrase that has become current in British politics: 'Wait and see.'

FIFTY years ago no one would have thought of writing about the nature of motherliness. To sing of motherhood was then just as natural for ecstatic souls as to sing of the sun, the great source of energy from which we all draw life; or to sing of the sea, the mysterious sea, whose depth none has fathomed. Great and strong as the sun and the sea, motherhood was called; just as

1 Miss Key's essay, which was written for

the Atlantic in Swedish, has been translated by Mrs. A. E. B. Fries. - THE EDITORS.

tremendous an elemental power, a natural force, as they alike manifest, alike inexhaustible. Every one knew that there existed women without motherly instincts, just as they knew of the existence of polar regions on the globe: every one knew that the female sex, as a whole, was the bearer of a power which was as necessary for life's duration as the sun and the sea, the power not only to bear, but to nurture, to love and rear and train. We knew that woman, as a gift from Nature, possessed the warmth which, from birth to death, made human life human; the gift which made the mother the child's providence, the wife the husband's happiness, the grandmother the com

fort of all. A warmth which, though radiating most strongly to those gathered around the family hearth, also reached those outside the circle of her dearest, who have no homes of their own, and embraced even the strange bird as it paused on its journey. For motherliness was boundless; its very nature was to give, to sacrifice, to cherish, to be tender, even as it is the nature of the sun to warm, and of the sea to surge/Fruitfulness and motherhood received religious worship in the antique world, and no religious custom has withstood the changes of the times so long as this.

Many ideas have become antiquated and many values have been estimated afresh, while the significance of the mother has remained unchallenged. Until recently, the importance of her vocation was as universally recognized as in the days of Sparta and Rome. The ideas of the purpose for which she ought to educate her sons changed, but the belief in the importance of training by the mother remained. Through the Madonna Cult the Catholic Church made motherhood the centre of religion. The Madonna became the symbol of the mother-heart's highest happiness and deepest woe, as embodied in the VirginMother's holy devotion at the manger and the sacred grief of the Mater Dolorosa at the cross. The Madonna became the symbol of woman's highest calling, that of giving to humanity its saviours and heroes those heroes of the spirit, so many of whom have borne witness to the importance of the intrinsic power of womanhood as a guide, not only to earthly life, but also to those metaphysical heights about which the greatest of them all has testified that: Das Ewigweibliche zieht uns hinan.'

'Das Ewigweibliche' is nothing but the well of maternal tenderness, that power of love, whereby woman's intui

tion takes a short cut to the heights which man's thought reaches by a more laborious path. Great poets have perceived that motherhood is not only the mighty race-renewer. Björnstjerne Björnson says that 'all creating is of mother origin'; in other words, that all the qualities which the child craves of the mother, the work craves of its creator: the vision, the waiting, the hope, the pure will, the faith, and the love; the power to suffer, the desire to sacrifice, the ecstasy of devotion. Thus, man also has his 'motherliness,' a compound of feelings corresponding to those with which the woman enriches the race, oftener than the work, but which in woman, as in man, constitutes the productive mental process without which neither new works nor new generations turn out well. Man's experience of the mother's influence on his life causes him at least among the Romanic people to include the mother in his worship of the Madonna. And whenever a man dreams of the great love, he sees a vision of motherly tenderness fused with the fire of passion.

In Art, that great undogmatized church, man has not wearied of interpreting that dream, of glorifying that vision in word and color. Even the woman-child, with motherly action straining the doll to her breast, kindles his emotion; he would kneel to the maiden who, unseen, displays her tender solicitude for a child, to the 'Sister' who brightens the sick-room, to the old nurse in whose face every wrinkle has been formed as a cranny of goodness. They all touch his emotion in revealing the loveliest of his possessions in mother or wife; if he has neither, then the things which he most yearns to have, and which he most warmly desires about him in his last hours. Whether the individual was doomed to yearn in vain or not, that motherliness existed has

always been felt to be as certain as that the sun existed, even though the day be overcast. Humanity could, one thought, count on the warmth of motherliness, as for millions of years we may still rely on the warmth of the

sun.

II

During those earlier periods motherliness was but a mighty nature-force; beneficial, but violent as well; guiding, but also blind. As little as they discussed the question of the natural division of labor, which had arisen because the woman bore, nurtured, and reared the children, and—in literal as well as spiritual sense-kept the fire on the hearth, even less did they doubt the natural 'mother instinct' being sufficient for the human family./The instinct sufficed to propagate the race, and the question of not only propagating, but elevating, had not yet been thought upon. Even such as it has been, motherliness has achieved enormous gains for progress. Although not yet consciously cultivated, it has been the greatest cultural power. Through research into the origin of humanity and into its early history, it became clear to us that motherliness was the first germ of altruism and that the sacrifices for their progeny which the higher animals, and even the lowest races of mankind, imposed upon themselves, were the first expressions of the race-bond; a bond out of which later the social feeling gradually developed with its countless currents and unmeasurable deeps./

With the primitive peoples who lived in a state of war of all against all, there was only one spot where battle did not rage, where the tender feeling, little by little, grew. Among the older people mutual depredation was the established order; only the child craved help; and in helping the child, father

and mother united. The child made the beginning of a higher relation between the parents. In the man the fatherly duty of protection took the form of war and hunting, which developed the self-assertive, 'egoistical' qualities; while the woman's duties developed the self-sacrificing, altruistic feelings./

Motherliness, which in the beginning was but the animal instinct for protecting the young, became helpfulness, compassion, glad sympathy, far-thinking tenderness, personal love a relation in which the feeling of duty had come to possess the strength of instinct, one in which it was never asked if, but only how, the duty should be fulfilled. And though the manner of showing the feeling has undergone transition, the feeling itself, during all the ages that it has acted in human life, has developed until, in our day, it has grown far beyond the boundaries of home. The man's work is to kindle the fire on the hearth, the woman's is to maintain it; it is man's, to defend the lives of those belonging to him; woman's, to care for them. This is the division of labor by which the race has reached its present stage/

Manliness and womanliness became synonymous with the different kinds of exercise of power belonging to each sex, in their separate functions of father and mother. That the mother, through her imagination dwelling on the unborn child, through her bond with the living child, through her incessant labors, joys, and hopes, has more swiftly and strongly developed her motherliness than the father his fatherliness, is psychologically self-evident. The modern psychologist knows that it is not the association of theory, but the association of feeling, which is the most important factor in the soullife. But besides feeling, which belongs to the unconscious sphere, and which, like the roots of the plant, must remain

in the dark soil that the tree may live, we have will to guide our thoughts. What is present in the soul, what directs our action, what spurs our effort, that is what we, with all our will, as well as feeling, hold dear. Thus there accumulated in the female sex an energy of motherliness, which has shown itself so mighty and boundless a power that we have come to claim it as a constant element and one not subject to change. And this energy grew so great because the hitherto universally conflicting elements in human life reached their oneness in mother-love; the soul and the senses, altruism and egoism, blended./ In every strong maternal feeling there is also a strong sensuous feeling of pleasure, which an unwise mother gives vent to in the violent caresses with which she fondles the soft body of her baby a pleasure which thrills the mother with blissful emotion when she puts the child to her breast; and at that same moment motherliness attains its most sublime spiritual state, sinks into the depths of eternity, which no ecstatjc words only tears can express. Self-sacrifice and self-realization come to harmony in mother-love.

In a

word, then, the nature of motherliness is altruism and egoism harmonized This harmony makes motherhood the most perfect human state; that in which the individual happiness is a constant giving, and constant giving is the highest happiness. Björnson's words, 'a mother suffers from the moment she is a mother,' and the declaration of countless women that they never realized the meaning of bliss until they held the child to their breast, are fully reconcilable in the nature of motherhood.

What torrents of life-force, of soul, tenderness, and goodness have flowed through humanity from the motherliness of the true mothers, and the mothers who have not borne children. All

the bodily pangs and labors which motherhood and mother-care have cost age after age, is the least of their giving. All the patient toiling which millions of mothers have imposed upon themselves when they alone have reared and fed their children, all the watchful nights, all the tired steps, all that mothers have denied themselves for the sake of their children, is not the greatest of their sufferings. That is their greatest sorrow which a man has expressed in the poem wherein the mother throws her heart at her son's feet, who, as he angrily stumbles over it, hears it whisper, 'Did you hurt yourself, my child?'

During the thousands of years that motherliness was of this sort, women had not yet been seized with the modern and legitimate desire, sich auszuleben, to drain the wine of life. The one desire of their souls was sich einzuleben' to lose themselves in the lives of their dear ones in their own world, often narrow indeed, yet for them a world grown great and rich through the joy of motherhood in creating. The mother had labor and trouble no less than the working-woman of to-day, but then she was in the home. She could quiet the crying of the little child, take part for a moment in its play, give correction or help; she was at hand to receive their confidences when the children came in with their joys or griefs. Thus she wove of little silken threads a daily-stronger-growing band of love, which, throughout all the changes of life, and wherever the children afterwards went into the world, held their hearts close to her own. And when she, later, sat alone and yearned, how she lived in and through her children!

Though all were not like Goethe's mother, Goethe, whom we could have loved even more if he had oftener visited his glorious mother, yet she is

typical of the many, many mothers in whom motherliness has been so strong that it has lived by its own strength, so great that it has developed all the powers of their beings. And these mothers became complete individualities of dignity and worth, although their life-interest was centred, not in a work of their own, but in the child to whom they had given the best of themselves. They were mothers of whom sons have testified that from them had they got their own essential qualities. Those mothers were not 'characterless' beings, upon whom the women of our day, bent on the complete expression of their wonderful lives, look down. No, they were in the noblest sense liberated. Their personalities were enriched through wisdom and calm power. They were ripened into a sweetness and fullness through a motherliness which not only had tended the body, but which had been, in deepest meaning, a spiritual motherhood.

Besides these glorious revealers of motherliness, there has always been the great swarm of anxious bird-mothers, who could do no more than cover their young with their wings; great flocks of 'goose-mothers,' mothers who with good reason were called unnatural, just because it was never doubted that motherliness was the natural thing, something one had a right to expect the wealth which could have no end.

III

Scientific investigation into the form through which, consciously or unconsciously, the power of motherliness was expressed in the laws and customs of the past, and further research into that compound of feelings and ideas which shaped and gave rise to the traditions of savage tribes, came simultaneously with the era of Woman-Emancipation. At the same time there took place a

deep transformation in the view of life, during which all values were estimated anew, even the value of motherliness. And now the women themselves borrow their argument from science, when they try to prove that motherliness is only an attribute woman shares with the female animal, an attribute belonging to lower phases of development, whereas her full humanity embraces all the attributes, independent of sex, which she shares with man. Women now demand that woman, as man, first of all be judged by purely human qualities, and declare that every new effort to make woman's motherliness a determining factor for her nature or her calling, is a return to antiquated superstition.

When the Woman Movement began, in the middle of the last century, and many expressed fears that 'womanliness would suffer, such contentions were answered by saying that that would be as preposterous as that the warmth of the sun would give out. It was just in order that the motherliness should be able to penetrate all the spheres of life that woman's liberation was required.

And now? Now we see a constantly decreasing birthrate on account of an increasing disinclination for motherhood, and this not alone among the child-worn drudges in home and industry, not alone among the lazy creatures of luxury. No, even women strong of body and worthy of motherhood choose either celibacy, or at most one child, often none. And not a few women are to be found eager advocates of children's upbringing from infancy outside of the home. Motherhood has, in other words, for many women ceased to be the sweet secret dream of the maiden, the glad hope of the wife, the deep regret of the ageing woman who has not had this yearning satisfied. Motherliness has diminished to such a