CARE OF OFFSPRING 77 



have their organs for producing seeds. And many 

 a plant will make a supreme effort to produce off- 

 spring rather than die without having perpetuated 

 its kind. And plants — and of course more markedly 

 animals and men — do not stop with merely repro- 

 ducing their kind. Besides devoting their energies 

 to propagation, they will deliberately make special 

 provision for their offspring ; they will supply it 

 with albumen and starch. And many insects are 

 not only indefatigable, but highly intelligent, in 

 providing food for their young even before the 

 young are hatched out. They do not lay their eggs 

 on any plant at random, but will wander for miles 

 to find a plant on which their young can feed, and 

 they then lay their eggs on that plant. Individual 

 plants, insects, animals, or men may be frightfully 

 selfish in their hard struggle for existence, but the 

 one thing in regard to which no individual is selfish 

 is in regard to its offspring. Primitive man, utterly 

 callous about the sufferings of animals and of his 

 own fellow-men and even of his wife, is tenderly 

 careful of his child while it remains a child — and 

 this is a very significant trait in his character. 



However indifferent the individual may be to 

 the sufferings of those about him, he will make any 

 sacrifice for his offspring. There is some instinct 

 within plants and animals alike which impels them 

 to sacrifice themselves that their kind may continue. 



So that Activity which is at the source of all life, 

 and is keeping living things together in an inter- 

 connected whole, not only forces them upward in 

 the scale of being, but is also driving them to look 

 forward into the future, to provide for the future — 



