TUE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIEa. 17 



a preliminary which, compared with what directly 

 and indirectly rises out of it, may be almost passed 

 over. The significant note is ethical, the development 

 of Other-ism as Altruism — its immediate and in- 

 evitable outcome. Watch any higher animal at that 

 most critical of all hours — for itself, and for its species 

 — the hour when it gives birth to another creature 

 like itself. Pass over the purely physiological pro- 

 cesses of birth ; observe the behavior of the animal- 

 mother in presence of the new and helpless life which 

 palpitates before her. There it lies, trembling in the 

 balance between life and death. Hunger tortures it ; 

 cold threatens it ; danger besets it ; its blind existence 

 hangs by a thread. There is the opportunity of 

 Evolution. There is an opening appointed in the 

 physical order for the introduction of a moral order. 

 If there is more in Nature than the selfish Struggle 

 for Life the secret can now be told. Hitherto, the 

 world belonged to the Food-seeker, the Self-seeker, the 

 Struggler for Life, the Father. Now is the hour of 

 the Mother. And, animal though she be, she rises to 

 her task. And that hour, as she ministers to her 

 young, becomes to her, and to the world, the hour of 

 its holiest birth. 



Sympathy, tenderness, unselfishness, and the long 

 list of virtues which make up Altruism, are the direct 

 outcome and essential accompaniment of the repro- 

 ductive process. Without some rudimentary mater- 

 nal solicitude for the egg in the humblest forms of 

 life, or for the young among higher forms, the living 

 world would not only suffer, but would cease. For a 

 time in the life-history of every higher animal the 

 direct, personal, gratuitous, unrewarded help of an- 

 2 



