"It is not easy yet to draw any definite conclusion from the practical working of the system, for it has not been working long enough. Nevertheless, it would be impossible, I think, to find anywhere a more hopeful band of youths than those to whose education Iréné and her staff are now devoting themselves. Indeed, wherever the cult is in operation the girls and boys who proceed from the cloister are, to my judgment, immeasurably superior in the average to any similar number drawn at haphazard from the community at large. And, indeed, how could it be otherwise? Heredity must in the long run count for a great deal; and by securing to the Demetrian issue, not only the highest conceivable education and parental care, but a sense that they owe something more to themselves as regards standard of conduct because they owe so much to the state, we create an environment which gives hereditary tendencies the best possible opportunities for development.
"Now, as regards the last part of your question, my answer is a very simple one: The mission is beautiful only when wisely tendered and wisely accepted; when unwisely tendered or unwisely accepted it is likely to be, as you say, inhuman and even repulsive."
"But how are you going to learn wisdom," asked I, "in a matter so difficult?"
"Experience has already helped us, I think, to avoid serious mistakes except in such exceptional cases as this of Lydia. For your attention has perhaps not been called to a profound difference that exists in women little recognized in your day. This difference can, I think, best be defined as follows: some women are essentially wives, others are essentially mothers. Love is the key that opens the heart of the one, maternity the instinct that animates the other. You are a lawyer, are you not? Did you ever have any divorce cases?"
"Many!"
"Ransack your brain, then, and see if you do not find there evidence of what I have stated."
He paused; and there came back to me an interview with a woman who complained that her husband did not wish her to have children; and as it was children she wanted—so she said—the husband was almost immaterial. There came to my mind also many women I had known for whom the husband ceased to have importance the moment a child was born.
"Our art," continued he, "consists in selecting the women who combine willingness to sacrifice themselves with this maternal instinct; and not the maternal instinct alone—most women have this—but a maternal instinct that preponderates every other. We have made a double mistake in Lydia: her love for Chairo is the prepondering instinct; and though she has undoubtedly a strongly developed religion of sacrifice, she is also fond of pleasure. That pretty little tip-tilted nose of hers," he added, smiling, "should have warned us of this!"