CAREFUL MOTHERS 



or maternal love ; for love must be given to a creature which is seen. 

 Such an animal as I have described cannot know the meaning of its 

 actions, since it does not live to see their result. These actions are 

 performed without understanding, and unconsciously; they are the 

 operation of an urge which enters the insect's body at the breeding- 

 season. And its body is already organized to fulfil this urge, so that 

 the whole seems to us like a fully-wound train of clockwork, which 

 suddenly begins to run down when the urge releases the stored 

 energy. We call such behaviour instinctive. This instinct is bestowed 

 upon the living creature just as its body is bestowed upon it; it 

 evolves with that body, and is bequeathed by the parent to the 

 offspring, and neither the one nor the other can vary it in any 

 direction. In just the same way we receive, together with our eyelids, 

 the faculty of closing them in a flash if the eye is imperilled. If we 

 ask whence this instinct comes, we find this inquiry included in 

 the greater question: who was finally responsible for setting the 

 evolution of life at work upon the earth, and in the last or first 

 resort, for the emergence of the worlds themselves ? For instinct, in 

 unbroken continuity, runs through the whole of evolution. 



Whereas instinct is inborn, the operations of the understanding 

 first come into being in the lifetime of its possessor; and while 

 instinct does its work without model or example, and under a given 

 internal compulsion, the achievements of the understanding are 

 bettered by learning and practice. Every silkworm, however care- 

 fully you may isolate it from its kind, spins its cocoon in precisely 

 the right manner. But no child will ever learn to write unless its 

 teacher shows it how to do so, and unless by practice it gradually 

 acquires the power of controlling its pen-strokes with certainty. 



Therefore those animals in whose lives intelligent action plays 

 a part have need of a season of learning and of practice, a protected 

 period, during which their lives will not be imperilled by every 

 unsuccessful attempt. Such a season is enjoyed by the mammals 

 and the birds; it is the period of youth. In its youth the kitten learns 

 to catch mice; the young falcons learn to stoop and seize the prey 

 which their parents let fall as they swoop overhead. If they miss it, 

 they are in no danger of starving, for the old birds catch the victim 

 anew, and the game is played over again. It was for the sake of 

 such "child's play" that the protected season of youth was established; 

 in its youth the young bird or mammal exercises its bodily and 

 mental faculties, which it inherits in the germ, but which are not 

 yet fully developed. 



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