272 THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER. 



trouble with it. It was easier, moreover, a thousand 

 times easier, for Nature to make a million young than 

 one Mother. But the ethical effect, if one may use 

 such a term here, of this early arrangement was nil. 

 All this saving of Motherly trouble meant for a long 

 space in Nature complete absence of maternal train- 

 ing. With children of this sort, Motherhood had no 

 chance. There was no time to love, no opportunity to 

 love, and no object to love. It was a period of physi- 

 cal installations ; and of psychical installations only as 

 establishing the first stages of the maternal instinct 

 ■ — the prenatal care of the egg. This is a necessary 

 beginning, but it is imperfect ; it arrests itself at the 

 critical point — where care can react upon the Mother. 



Now, before Maternal Love can be evolved out of 

 this first care, before Love can be made a necessity, 

 and carried past the unhatched egg to the living thing 

 which is to come out of it, Nature must alter all her 

 ways. Four great changes at least must be introduced 

 into her programme. In the first place, she must 

 cause fewer young to be produced at a birth. In the 

 seco nd place, she must have these young produced in 

 such outward form that their Mothers will recognize 

 them. In the thir d p lace, instead of producing them 

 in such physical perfection that they are able to go 

 out into life the moment they are born, she must 

 make them helpless, so that for a time they must 

 dwell with her if they are to live at all. And fourth- 

 ly, it is required that she shall be made to dwell with 

 them ; that in some way they also should be made 

 necessary — physically necessary — to her to compel her 

 to attend to them. All these beautiful arrangements 

 we find carried out to the last detail. A mother is 



