SEXUAL CEREBRATION. 293 



paternity. Notice from this that even the lofty elevation of intel- 

 lectual man, and exalted yet higher by the force of education, has not 

 been sufficient to change beyond recognition this emotion in its rela- 

 tive condition and quality as it exists among animals. 



We cannot separate the mental from the bodily life. When we 

 scan the deeper relation of things in their genesis, there are displayed 

 in closest connection continuity of parts and functions (Maudsley). 

 The maternal emotion exists potentially in the intellection of the 

 healthy adult woman as a natural outcome of the existence of organs 

 and functions which render possible the occasion of its activity. As 

 the time approaches for its full development, any observing physician 

 can jDerceive the latent emotion assuming shape and direction to a 

 definite end. Numberless cares and solicitudes, colored by the ten- 

 dei-est of anticipations, become dominant in her volition. Not once, 

 but innumerably, has a star over Bethlehem shed its lucid light in the 

 hearts of watchers, and roused from the depths of latent emotions, half 

 stifled with agony, the infinite possibilities of a mother's love. De 

 Quincey, who intellectually stood so near the verge of the impossible 

 in thought, and measured the heights and fathomed the depths of 

 hearts, looked upon this kindling of the maternal emotion, at the su- 

 premest moment of a woman's life, with the eyes of a seer. Until I 

 read this,* there always seemed an incongruity in the piercing grief 

 of a mother over the death of her new-born. One with whom there 

 was associated not a single earthly emotion, save that of maternity, 

 but who was freshly linked with a hundred pangs, received upon its 

 little, scarcely human face, the most keenly-felt of maternal tears. 

 The reason is plain. The emotion of maternity exceeds reason, tran- 

 scends imagination, and is brought forth from the depths of organic 

 life as part of the mystery of reproduction. As from the state of 

 eunuchism we gained a knowledge of the sexual origin of certain at- 

 tributes which distinguish man intellectually, so, from the condition 

 resulting after the operation of spaying in animals, we may obtain 

 additional evidence of the origin of the maternal feeling. Animals so 

 treated have a great aversion for the young of their own species ; that 

 which was the maternal instinct in the normal animal becomes an 

 instinctive hatred in the unsexed one. Here it is evident that the 

 presence of organs whose existence is necessary to the completion of 

 function is a prime factor in the creation of an overruling instinct. I 

 have already drawn attention to the great resemblance between the 

 maternal emotion in human beings and the maternal instinct in ani- 

 mals, and it does not seem to be unreasonable to trace both emo- 

 tion and instinct to a common and physical cause. It is not in the 

 power of a woman, normal psychically and physically, to repress her 

 maternal emotion in the presence of her new-born, and in this respect 

 she is allied to her sister animals. But the analogy here ceases. The 



* " Suspiria de Profundis." 



