THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 339 



editions this would not have been possible in the 

 case of Man. But even among animals it is not 

 true that Reproduction completes its work apart 

 from higher principles, for even there, there are 

 accompaniments, continually increasing in definite- 

 ness, which at least represent the instincts and 

 emotions of Man. It is no doubt true that in 

 animals the affections are less voluntarily directed 

 than in the case of a human mother. But in either 

 case they must have been involuntary at first. It 

 can only have been at a late stage in Evolution 

 that Nature could trust even her highest product to 

 carry on the process by herself. Before Altruism was 

 strong enough to take its own initiative, necessity 

 had to be laid upon all mothers, animal and human, 

 to act in the way required. In part physiological, 

 this necessity was brought about under the ordinary 

 action of that principle which had to take charge 

 of everything in Nature until the will of Man ap- 

 peared — Natural Selection. A mother who did not 

 care for her children would have feeble and sickly 

 children. Their children's children would be feeble 

 and sickly children. And the day of reckoning 

 would come when they would be driven off the 

 field by a hardier, that is a better-mothered, race. 

 Hence the premium of Nature upon better mothers. 

 Hence the elimination of all the reproductive fail- 



