EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY 



Australian continent. It was a fresh triumph for 

 love when the mother learned to form, from her 

 own life-blood, the fluid that should feed her 

 young. The duck-mole, or ornithorhynchus, the 

 Australian egg-laying mammal, still extant, teaches 

 us that this step was taken ere yet the ethical 

 worth of reproduction had risen even higher. 

 The next stage, while still retaining the ground 

 gained by the evolution of the mammalia ground 

 which one would say was permanently gained did 

 not one remember the "society" mother of to-day, 

 who is apparently ceasing to be mammalian was 

 to retain the egg within the maternal body for 

 some time and then to bring forth an immature 

 creature which could survive only in the warmth 

 of a maternal pouch. This is the lesson of the 

 kangaroo. Lastly, the mammalian mother learned 

 to perfect a marvellous organ called the placenta 

 the "after -birth" of which every mother has 

 heard and was thus enabled to retain her child 

 within her own body for a much longer period 

 than any mother had hitherto been able to en- 

 compass. 



And, throughout, the evolution of love, of self- 

 sacrifice, has justified itself on every score. The 

 latest product of love, as we have seen, is man 

 more helpless and dependent at birth than any of 

 his predecessors, yet their master beyond question- 

 ing. Love has produced not only this " paragon of 

 animals," but has established herself in his breast 

 as the source of all that is best in him. Having 

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