21 



other animals. Let me exemplify this by reference to the 

 reproductive economy in the vertebrate series. 



The instinctive sense of dependence upon another, mani- 

 fested by the impulse to seek out a mate, which impulse, 

 even in fishes, is sometimes so irresistible that they throw 

 themselves on shore in the pursuit, this first step in the 

 supercession of the lower and more general law of individual- 

 or self-preservation, although not first introduced at the ver- 

 tebrate stage of the animal series, is never departed from after 

 that stage has been gained. To this sexual relation is next 

 added a self-sacrificing impulse of a higher kind, viz. the 

 parental instinct. As we rise in the survey of vertebrate 

 phenomena, we see the entire devotion of self to offspring in 

 the patient incubation of the bird, in the unwearied exertions 

 of the Swift or the Hawk to obtain food for their callow brood 

 when hatched ; in the bold demonstration which the Hen, at 

 other times so timid, will make to repel threatened attacks 

 against her cowering young. 



Still closer becomes the link between the parent and off- 

 spring in the Mammalian class, by the substitution, for the 

 exclusion of a passive irresponsive ovum, of the birth of a 

 living young, making instinctive irresistible appeal, as soon 

 as born, to maternal sympathy ; deriving nutriment immedi- 

 ately from the mother's body, and both giving and receiving 

 pleasure by that act. 



These beautiful foreshadowings of higher attributes are, 

 however, transitory in the brute creation, and the relations 

 cease, as soon as the young quadruped can provide for itself. 

 Preservation of offspring has been superinduced on self-pre- 

 servation, but there is as yet no self-improvement : this is the 

 peculiar attribute of mankind. The human species is charac- 

 terised by the prolonged dependence of a slowly maturing off- 

 spring on parental cares and affections, in which are laid the 

 foundations of the social system, and time given for instilling 

 those principles on which Man's best wisdom and truest hap- 

 piness are based, and by which he is prepared for another and 



