268 THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER. 



Nature was to make Mothers ? It is at least certain 

 that this was the chief thing she did. Ask the 

 Zoologist what, judging from science alone, Nature 

 aspired to from the first, he could but answer Mam 

 malia Mothers. In as real a sense as a factory 

 is meant to turn out locomotives or clocks, the 

 machinery of Nature is designed in the last resort to 

 turn out Mothers. You will find Mothers in lower 

 nature at every stage of imperfection ; you will 

 see attempts being made to get at better types ; 

 you find old ideas abandoned and higher models 

 coming to the front. And when you get to the 

 top you find the last great act was but to present to 

 the world a physiologically perfect type. It is a fact 

 which no human Mother can regard without awe, 

 which no man can realize without a new reverence for 

 woman and a new belief in the higher meaning of 

 Nature, that the goal of the whole plant and animal 

 kingdoms seems to have been the creation of a family, 

 which the very naturalist has had to call Mammalia. 



That care for others, from which the Mammalia 

 take their name, though reaching its highest expres 

 sion there, is introduced into Nature in cruder forms 

 almost from the dawn of life. In the vegetable king 

 dom, from the motherlessness of the early Crypto 

 gams, we rise to find a first maternity foreshadowed 

 in the flowering tree. It elaborates a seed or nut or 

 fruit with infinite precaution, surrounding the embryo 

 with coat after coat of protective substance, and stor 

 ing around it the richest foods for its future use. 

 And rudimentary though the manifestation be, when 

 we remember that this is not an incident in the tree s 

 life but its whole blossom and crown, it is impossible 



