348 THE ASCENT OF MAN 



But there is another reason, in addition to the 

 precocity of the offspring, why parental care is a 

 drug in the market in lower Nature. There are 

 such multitudes of these creatures that it is scarcely 

 worth caring for them. The humbler denizens of 

 the world produce offspring, not by units or tens, 

 but by thousands and millions ; and with popu- 

 lations so vast, maternal protection is not required 

 to sustain the existence of the species. It was 

 probably on the whole a better arrangement to 

 produce a million and let them take their chance, 

 than to produce one and take special 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 training. 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 physical installations; 

 and of psychical installations only as establishing 

 the first stages of the maternal instinct — the prenatal 

 care of the Q^'g. This is a necessary beginning, 

 but it is imperfect ; it arrests itself at the critical 

 point — where care can react upon the Mother. 



