398 Life and Immortality. 



Now, as to the subject of Parental Love, and the various 

 ways in which it manifests itself. There are many writers 

 who claim that parental love in the lower animals is not 

 identical with that of man. They affirm that it is only a 

 blind instinct, and, in order to mark more strongly the dis- 

 tinction between man and beast, call the parental love of the 

 latter by the name of storge. Speaking for myself, I must 

 declare that I am unable to perceive any distinction between 

 the two, save that in civilized man the parental love is better 

 regulated than among the lower animals. But, as has been 

 seen, it is not regulated at all among the uncivilized races, 

 and, in truth, many of the beasts are far better parents than 

 most savages. Nor can I understand why the word storge 

 should be applied to parental love among the lower animals 

 and not to the same feeling in man. Among Greek writers 

 the word, together with the verb from which it is derived, 

 is applied to the love between human parents and children. 

 It is so applied by Plato, and in the same sense by Sophocles 

 and others. One argument adduced by those who deny the 

 identity of the feeling in both cases is that parental love 

 endures throughout life in man, while it expires with the 

 adolescence of the young in the lower animals. This is 

 doubtless true, as a rule, with civilized man, but in the case 

 of the savage, as has previously been shown, it does not last 

 longer than that of a bird, a cat or a dog, taking into con- 

 sideration the relative duration of life. And the reason is 

 identical in both cases. Were this love to exist through life 

 in the savage, the beast or the bird, the race would become 

 extinct, for neither race is able to support its children longer 

 than their time of helplessness. The beast and the bird can- 

 not, and the savage will not, provide for the future. It is 

 therefore evident that if the young had to depend upon their 

 parents for subsistence, they would soon perish from lack of 

 food. Exceptions there are to this general rule, and always, 

 as far as can be determined, in the case of domesticated 

 animals whose means of subsistence are already insured. 



