THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 298 



lived outside all these changes ; and while Nature has 

 succeeded in moulding a human Mother and a human 

 child, he still wanders in the forest a savage and 

 unblessed soul. 



This time for him, nevertheless, is not lost. In 

 his own way he is also at school, and learning lessons 

 which will one day be equally needed by humanity. 

 The acquisitions of the manly life are as necessary 

 to human character as the virtues which gather their 

 sweetness by the cradle ; and these robuster elements 

 strength, courage, manliness, endurance, self-reli- 

 ance could only have been secured away from 

 domestic cares. Apart from that, it- was not neces- 

 sary to put the Father through the same mill as the 

 Mother. Whatever the Mother gained would be 

 handed on to her boys as well as to her girls, and 

 with the law of heredity to square accounts, it was 

 unnecessary for each of the two great sides of human- 

 ity to make the same investments. By one acquiring 

 one set of virtues and the other another, the blend in 

 the end would be the richer ; and, without obliter- 

 ating the eternal individualities of each, the measure 

 of completeness would be gained more quickly for the 

 race. Before heredity, however, could do its work 

 upon the Father a certain basis had to be laid. With 

 his original habits he would squander the hereditary 

 gains as fast as he received them, and unless some 

 change was brought about in his mode of life the old 

 wild blood in his veins would counteract the gentler 

 influence, and leave all the Mother's work in vain. 

 Hence Nature had to set about another long and diffi- 

 cult process to make the savage Father a reformed 

 character. 



