CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX. 

 THE END OF THE CIRCLE. 



1. Our Circuit. We have been studying in these 

 chapters one of the most wonderful of the many remark- 

 able things about life. I wonder if I have made it so that 

 you understand and appreciate it? I hope you may do 

 both. We have seen how reproduction thwarts death. 

 The parent would surely die sooner or later, but by 

 dividing it saves the species and makes itself immortal. 

 Gradually the process becomes perfected so the parents 

 live longer side by side with their offspring. 



We have seen how the increasing helplessness of the 

 offspring makes the care of the parents more and more 

 necessary, and how this in turn binds the mates together 

 in the necessary task of caring for the young. This makes 

 home possible, and develops sympathy and love and the 

 finer qualities of sacrifice. The home relations become 

 more and more important, until, in humans of the more 

 advanced races, the home is looked upon as the very 

 picture of what human society ought some day to 

 become — a great family. 



We have seen how family relations have built up in the 

 best men and women a sense of respect and chivalry; how 

 self-control is coming gradually to dominate the primitive 

 animal sex-qualities; how the mental and spiritual appre- 

 ciation of husband and wife for one another enlarge and 

 enrich and refine their lives more than any single factor in 

 all our conditions. 



138 



