THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER. 271 



where they will be least exposed — a case which illus- 

 trates in a palpable way the essential difference 

 between Motherhood and Maternity. Maternity here, 

 in the restricted sense of merely adequate physical 

 care, is carried to its utmost perfection. Everything 

 that can be done for the egg is done. Motherhood, 

 on the other hand, is non-existent, is even an anatom- 

 ical impossibility. If a butterfly could live till its 

 egg was hatched — which does not happen — it would 

 see no butterfly come out of the egg, no airy likeness 

 of itself, but an earth-bound caterpillar. If it rec- 

 ognized this creature as its child, it could never 

 play the Mother to it. The anatomical form is so 

 different that were it starving it could not feed it, 

 were it threatened it could not save it, nor is it 

 possible to see any direction in which it could be 

 of the slightest use to it. It is obvious that Nature 

 never intended to make a Mother here ; that all that 

 she desired as yet was to perfect the first maternal 

 instinct. And the tragedy of the situation is that, 

 on that day when her training to be a true Mother 

 should begin, she passes out of the world. 



But there is another reason, in addition to the pre- 

 cocity of the offspring, why parental care is a drug in 

 the market in lower Nature. There are such multi- 

 tudes of these creatures that it is scarcely worth 

 caring for them. The humbler denizens of the world 

 produce offspring, not by units or tens, but by thou- 

 sands and millions ; and with populations so vast, 

 maternal protection is not required to sustain the ex- 

 istence of the species. It was probably on the whole a 

 better arrangement to produce a million and let them 

 take their chance, than to produce one and take special 



