THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER 375 



The world was now beginning to fill with Mothers, 

 but there were no Fathers. During all this long 

  process the Father has not even been named. 

 Nothing that has been done has touched or con- ^ 

 cerned him almost in the least degree. He has 

 gone his own way, lived outside all these changes ; 

 and while Nature has succeeded in moulding a 

 human Mother and a human child, he still wanders 

 in the forest a savage and unblessed soul. 



This time for him, nevertheless, is not lost. In 

 his own way he is also at school, and learning 

 lessons which will one day be equally needed by 

 humanity. The acquisitions of the manly life are 

 as necessary to human character as the virtues 

 which gather their sweetness by the cradle ; and 

 these robuster elements — strength, courage, manli- 

 ness, endurance, self-reliance — could only have been 

 secured away from domestic cares. Apart from 

 that, it was not necessary to put the Father through 

 the same mill as the Mother. Whatever the Mother 

 gained would be handed on to her boys as well as 

 to her girls, and with the law of heredity to 

 square accounts, it was unnecessary for each of 

 the two great sides of humanity to make the same 

 investments. By one acquiring one set of virtues 

 and the other another, the blend in the end 

 would be the richer; and, without obliterating the 



