them only
to return, but the offspring of these poor exhausted creatures, if they
do not die in the Foundling, will be, like their mothers, the habitual
inmates of those hospitals. A miserably poor woman is a whole family
of sick persons in perspective.

Whether we be philosophers, physiologists, political economists, or
statesmen, we all know that the excellency of the race, the strength of
the people, come especially from the woman. Does not the nine months'
support of the mother establish this? Strong mothers have strong
children.

We all are, and ever shall be, the debtors of women. They are mothers;
this says everything. He who would bargain about the work of those who
are the joy of the present and the destiny of the future, must needs
have been born in misery and damnation. Their manual labour is a very
secondary consideration; that is especially our part. What do they
make?--Man: this is a superior work. To be loved, to bring forth both
physically and morally, to educate man (our barbarous age does not
quite understand this yet), this is the business of woman.

"_Fons omnium viventium_!" What can ever be added to this sublime
saying?

Whilst writing all this, I have had in my mind a woman, whose strong
and serious mind would not have failed to support me in these
contentions: I lost her thirty years ago (I was a child then);
nevertheless, ever living in my memory, she follows me from age to age.

She suffered with me in my poverty, and was not allowed to share my
better fortune. When young I made her sad, and now I cannot console
her. I know not even where her bones are: I was too poor then to buy
earth to bury her!

And yet I owe her much. I feel deeply that I am the son of woman.
Every instant in my ideas and words (not to mention my features and
gestures), I find again my mother in myself. It is my mother's blood
which gives me the sympathy I feel for by-gone ages, and the tender
remembrance of all those who are now no more.

What return then could I, who am myself advancing towards old age, make
her for the many things I owe her? One, for which she would have
thanked me--this protest in favour of women and mothers: and I place it
at the head of a book believed by some to be a work of controversy.
They are wrong.

The longer it lives, if it should live, the plainer will it be seen,
that, in spite of polemical emotion, it was a work of history, a work
of faith, of truth, and of sincerit