The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people. With this general proposition, I think all who are not immoral people will agree. The difference between men and women in the fulfilment of that vocation, is only in the means by which they attain it; that is to say, by which they serve men.

Man serves others by physical work,—procuring food; by intellectual work,—studying the laws of nature in order to master it; and by social work,—instituting forms of life, and establishing mutual relationships between people.

The means of serving others are various for men. The whole activity of mankind, with the exception of bearing children and rearing them, is open for his service to men. A woman, in addition to the possibility of serving men by all the means open to man is, by the construction of her body, called and inevitably attracted, to serve others by that which alone is excepted from the domain of the service of man.

The service of mankind is divided into two parts,—one, the augmentation of the welfare of mankind; the other, the continuation of the race. Men are called chiefly to the first, as they are deprived of the possibility of fulfilling the second. Women are called exclusively to the second, as they only are fitted for it. This difference one should not, one can not, forget or destroy; and it would be sinful to do so. From this difference proceed the duties of each,—duties not invented by men, but which are in the nature of things. From the same difference proceeds the estimation of virtue and vice for woman and man,—the estimation which has existed in every century, which exists now, and which will never cease to exist while reason exists in men.

It always has been the case, and it always will be, that a man who spends a great part of his life in the various physical and mental labours which are natural to him, and a woman who spends a great part of her life in the labour of bearing, nursing, and rearing children, which is her exclusive prerogative, will alike feel that they are doing their duty, and will alike rise in the esteem and love
of other people, because they both fulfil what is appointed because such is the substance of the matter.

The vocation of man is broader and more varied; the vocation of woman more uniform and narrower, but more profound: and therefore it has always been, and always will be, the case, that man, having hundreds of duties, will be neither a bad nor a pernicious man, even when he has been false to one or ten out of them, if he fulfils the greater part of his vocation; while woman, as she has a smaller number of duties, if she is false to one of them, instantly falls lower than a man, who has been false to ten out of his hundreds of duties. Such has always been the general opinion, and such it will always remain,—because such is the substance of the matter.

A man, in order to fulfil God's will, must serve him in the domain of physical work, thought and morality: in all these ways he can fulfil his vocation. Woman's service to God consists chiefly and almost exclusively in bearing children (because no one except herself can render it). Only by means of work, is man called to serve God and his fellow-men: only by means of her children, is a woman called to serve them.

Therefore, that love to her own children which is inborn in woman, that exclusive love against which it is quite vain to strive by reasoning, will always be, and ought to be, natural to a woman and a mother. That love to a child in its infancy is not egotism, it is the love of a workman for the work which he is doing while it is in his hands. Take away that love for the object of one's work, and the work becomes impossible. While I am making a boot, I love it ab............