294 ^^^^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



woman is gifted with intellect, tlie animal is not ; the woman has 

 memory, the animal has none ; and thus it is that the maternal instinct 

 ceases with the necessity of providing food for the young ; the mater- 

 nal emotion in the human mother ends nly with her life. But yet 

 again, how tender is the mother with her new-born babe, compared to 

 the exhibition of the same emotion towai'd her half-grown child ! 



The diifereutia that exist between the maternal and paternal emo- 

 tions are such as characterize other expressions of sexual cerebration. 

 I have already called attention to some of them. Among men, as the 

 mind assumes its higher moral and intellectual development, these 

 emotions are more nearly alike in the sexes, so far as constancy and 

 care are concerned. If we take into consideration the frequency of 

 the charge against men of desertion of family and children, and the 

 extreme rarity of this charge against woman, we perceive that the 

 paternal emotion must be accompanied by a certain degree of moral 

 sense in order to equal the maternal emotion, which alone, and unaided 

 by any mental accessory, is, as a rule, capable of the most heroic sac- 

 rifice. I think I may end our study of the maternal emotion here, 

 with no doubt in my mind, and with but little chance of valid objec- 

 tions on the part of others, that it is purely the result of sexual organ- 

 ization; that not indirectly, but directly, it is the psychical compo- 

 nent of the reproductive faculty, and as such is notably an example of 

 sexual cerebration. 



Love is the attraction between the sexes. The word is wrongly 

 used to express a great variety of relations and emotions. Spinoza 

 says that, " between appetite and desire there is no difference, except 

 so far as the latter implies consciousness ; desire is self-conscious ap- 

 petite." It is important that the presence of consciousness be not 

 allowed to obscure the fundamental condition of things in the brain. 

 Because of the affinity between vital structure and instinct or impulse, 

 the organic reaction becomes evident as a condition of consciousness, 

 overlooking the primary cause. " The striving after a pleasing im- 

 pression, or the effort to avoid a painful one, is at bottom a physical 

 consequence of the nature of the ganglionic cell in its relation to a 

 certain stimulus ; and the reaction or desire becomes the motive of a 

 general action on the part of the individual, for the purpose of satis- 

 fying a want or of shunning an ill " (Maudsley). Any of these self- 

 conscious appetites may become the main-spring of a voluntary action. 

 A desire which so results is gradually evolved out of an unconscious 

 organic appetite into an emotion, or a series of intelligently-connected 

 efforts. The physiological relation existing between the sexes is a 

 part of the organic law of reproduction. The action of this law finds 

 its expression through the brain, instinctively or emotionally in desire. 

 This participation of the brain in the reproductive stimulus is an ab- 

 solute necessity in order to place the sexes in a relation favorable to 

 an observance of one of the laws of their existence. With the gradual 



