THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER 343 



Worms, and Molluscs. Above these come the 

 Pisces, then the Amphibia, then the Reptilia, then 

 the Aves, then — What? The Mammalia, The 

 Mothers. There the series stops. Nature has never 

 made anything since. 



Is it too much to say that the one motive of 

 organic Nature was to make Mothers ? It is at 

 least certain that this was the chief thing she did. 

 Ask the Zoologist what, judging from science alone, 

 Nature aspired to from the first, he could but 

 answer Mammalia — Mothers. In as real a sense 

 as a factory is meant to turn out locomotives or 

 clocks, the machinery of Nature is designed in the 

 last resort to turn out Mothers. You will find 

 Mothers in lower Nature at every stage of im- 

 perfection ; you will see attempts being made to 

 get at better types; you find old ideas abandoned 

 and higher models coming to the front. And 

 when you get to the top you find the last great 

 act was but to present to the world a physio- 

 logically perfect type. It is a fact which no human 

 Mother can regard without awe, which no man can 

 realize without a new reverence for woman and a 

 new belief in the higher meaning of Nature, that 

 the goal of the whole plant and animal kingdoms 

 seems to have been the creation of a family, which 

 the very naturalist has had to call Mammalia. 



