290 THE EVOLUTION OF A M OTHER. 



of Selfishness. It does not follow that in all circum- 

 stances the nobler will be always victorious : but it 

 has a great chance. A few score more of centuries, 

 a few more millions of Mothers, and the germs of 

 Patience, Carefulness, Tenderness, Sympathy, and 

 Self-Sacrifice will have rooted themselves in Hu- 

 manity. 



See then what the Savage Mother and her Babe 

 have brought into the world. When the first Mother 

 awoke to her first tenderness and warmed her loneli- 

 ness at her infant's love, when for a moment she for- 

 got herself and thought upon its weakness or its pain, 

 when by the most imperceptible act or sign or look of 

 sympathy she expressed the unutterable impulse of 

 her Motherhood, the touch of a new creative hand was 

 felt upon the world. However short the earliest in- 

 fancies, however feeble the sparks they fanned, how- 

 ever long heredity took to gather fuel enough for a 

 steady flame, it is certain that once this fire began to 

 warm the cold hearth of Nature and give human- 

 ity a heart, the most stupendous task of the past was 

 accomplished. A softened pressure of an uncouth 

 hand, a human gleam in an almost animal eye, an 

 endearment in an inarticulate voice feeble things 

 enough. Yet in these faint awakenings lay the hope 

 of the human race. " From of old we have heard the 

 monition, ' Except ye be as babes ye cannot enter the 

 kingdom of Heaven ' ; the latest science now shows 

 us though in a very different sense of the words 

 that unless we had been as babes, the ethical phe- 

 nomena which give all its significance to the phrase 

 ' Kingdom of Heaven ' would have been non-exist- 

 ent for us. Without the circumstances of Infancy, 



