THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER 395 



of the annoyance they caused by the clamorousness 

 of their want, it became a stimulus to exertion, and 

 led in the end to rudimentary forms of sympathy 

 and self-denial. 



Once established in the world as a winning force, 

 love could only yield to a greater force than itself, 

 and greater force there is none. In the hands 

 of Natural Selection, therefore, it ran its course. 

 Whatever physiological adjustments continued to 

 go on beneath the surface, ethical factors now 

 determined extinction or survival. Bad parents 

 mean starved children, and starved children will be 

 replaced in the Struggle for Life by full-fed chil- 

 dren, and ere a few generations parents without 

 love will exist no more. The child, on the other 

 hand, which has drunk most deeply of its Father's 

 or its Mother's love lives to hand on that which 

 has spared it to a succeeding race. How much of 

 affection is handed on, or how little, matters not, 

 for Heredity works with the finest microscope, and 

 sees, and seizes, the invisible. In a second child, 

 reared by parents one degree more loving than the 

 last, this ultimate particle of love will grow a 

 little more, and each succeeding Family in this 

 royal line will be richer in the elements which 

 make for progress than the last. 



When we reach the human Family, we find that 



