56 Dr. C. W. SaUeby [Feb. 14, 



the world more helpless and incompetent than the young of any 

 other living creature ; the human baby is a fraction more helpless 

 even than the baby ape. A later age may reveal a Newton or a 

 Kelvin, a Shakespeare or a Goethe ; but all were helpless igno- 

 rant babies at first, unable even to find their way to the mother's 

 breast that was made for them. Thus motherhood, the importance 

 of which has been steadily rising throughout the ages, and is enor- 

 mous in all the mammals, is supremely important for the highest of 

 the mammals, which is man. No motherhood, no intelligence. You 

 may have the most perfect system of selection of the finest and high- 

 est individuals for parentage ; but the babies whose potentialities — 

 heredity gives no more — are so splendid, are always, will be always, 

 dependent upon motherhood. What was the state of motherhood 

 during the decline and fall of the Roman empire ? This factor 

 counts in history ; and will always count, so long as three times in 

 every century the only wealth of nations is reduced to dust, and 

 begins again in helpless infancy. As to Rome we know little, what- 

 ever may be suspected ; but we know that here, in the heart of the 

 greatest empire in history — and it is at the heart that empires rot — 

 thousands of mothers go out every day to tend dead machines, whilst 

 their own flesh and blood, with whom lies the imperial destiny, are 

 tended anyhow or not at all. To-day our historians and politicians 

 think in terms of regiments, and tariffs, and " Dreadnoughts " ; the 

 time will come when historians think in terms of babies and mother- 

 hood. We must think in such terms, too, if we wish Great Britain 

 to be much longer great. A history of motherhood is yet to seek. 

 Meanwhile, who will not deplore the perennial slaughter of babies in 

 this land, the deterioration of many for every one killed outright, 

 the waste of mothers' travail and tears ? 



Had all Roman mothers been Cornelias, would Rome have fallen ? 

 Consider the imitation mothers — no longer mammalia — to be found 

 in certain classes to-day — mothers who should be ashamed to look any 

 tabby cat in the face : consider the ignorant and downtrodden 

 mothers amongst our lower classes ; and ask whether these things are 

 not making history. Who will join the new party of one that calls 

 itself maternalist ? 



These principles find their warrant and application in the un- 

 exampled riddle of the persistence and success, throughout more than 

 two thousand years and a thousand vicissitudes, of the Jewish people. 

 It is true that we have here no exception to the apjmrent law that 

 empires are mortal, for there never was a Jewish empire ; the Jews were 

 never subject to tlje risk involved for racial or inherent progress, by 

 the possession of great acquired powers leading to the arrest of 

 strugiile and selection. But just as the fall of empires has often not 

 been the fall of races — various races having at various times carried 

 on the same imperial tradition — so the persistence of the Jews, as 



