THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 301 



tralian aborigines is indicated even in their weapons. 

 The very names " Servant, Slave," by which the 

 Brahman address their wives, and the wife's reply, 

 " Master, Lord," symbolize the gulf between the two. 

 There are exceptions, it is true, and often touching 

 exceptions. Travellers cite instances of constancy 

 among savage peoples which reach the region of 

 romance. Probably there never was a time, indeed, 

 nor a race, when some measure of sympathy did not 

 stir between husband and wife. But when we con- 

 sider all the facts, it is impossible to doubt that in the 

 region of all the higher affections the savage wife and 

 the savage husband were all but strangers to each 

 other. 



What then was wanting for the perfecting of the 

 domestic tie, and how did Evolution secure it? In 

 the animal creation, we have already witnessed the 

 methods which Nature took to get more care out of 

 little care, to make a short-lived sympathy grow into 

 a great sympathy. Her method was first, concen- 

 tration; and second, extension of time. By giving a 

 Mother one or two young to care for instead of a 

 hundred, she made care practicable, and by lengthen- 

 ing the period of infancy from hours to years she 

 made it inevitable. And these are again her methods 

 in perfecting love between man and wife. By abolish- 

 ing the pairing season she lengthened the time for 

 love to grow in ; the next step is to perfect the object 

 on which it shall focus. For there was again the 

 same sort of barrier to a full-blown love which we 

 saw before in the animal kingdom. An animal 

 mother could not truly love in the early days because 

 she had a hundred or a thousand young. Man could 



