THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER. 279 



Mother. And these imperceptibly slow drawings to- 

 gether of parent and child are the inevitable prelimi- 

 naries of the domestication of the Human Race. Re- 

 garded from the ethical point of view there are few 

 things more significant than this reining-in of the 

 world's rampant youth, this tightening the bonds of 

 family life, this most gentle introduction of gentleness 

 into a world cold with motherless children and heart- 

 less with childless mothers. 



The personal tie once formed between parent and 

 offspring could never be undone, and from this 

 moment onwards must grow from more to more. For 

 observe what has happened. A generation has grown 

 up to whom this tie is the necessity of existence. 

 Every Mammalian child born into the world must 

 come to be fed, must, for a given number of hours 

 each day, be in the maternal school, and whether it 

 like it or not, learn its lessons. No young of any 

 Mammal can nourish itself. There is that in it there- 

 fore at this stage which compels it to seek its Mother ; 

 and there is that in the Mother which compels it even 

 physically — and this is the fourth process, on which 

 it is needless to dwell — to seek her child. On the 

 physiological side, the name of this impelling power 

 is lactation ; on the ethical side, it is Love. And 

 there is no escape henceforth from communion be- 

 tween Mother and child, or only one — death. Break 

 this new bond and the Mammalia become extinct. 

 Nature is in earnest here, if anywhere. The training 

 of Humanity is seen to be under a compulsory educa- 

 tion act. It is in the severity and dread of her penal- 

 ties, coupled with the impossibility of evading the 

 least of them, that the will of Nature and the serious- 



