308 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 



ably did, from the frugivorous to the carnivorous 

 state, the Father had the additional responsibility of 

 keeping his family in food. It would be impossible 

 for a Mother to hunt for game and attend to her 

 young ; and for a long time the young themselves 

 were useless in the chase, and must be entirely de- 

 pendent on their parents' bounty. But this means 

 promotion to the Father. He is not only protector 

 but food-provider. It is impossible to believe that in 

 process of time the discharge of this office did not 

 bring some faint satisfactions to himself, that the mere 

 sight of his offspring fed instead of famished did not 

 give him a certain pleasure. And though the pleasure 

 at first may have been no more than the absence of 

 the annoyance they caused by the clamorousness of 

 their want, it became a stimulus to exertion, and led 

 in the en.d to rudimentary forms of sympathy and 

 self-denial. 



Once established in the world as a winning force, 

 love could only yield to a greater force than itself and 

 greater force there is none. In the hands of Natural 

 Selection, therefore, it ran its course. Whatever phys- 

 iological adjustments continued to go on beneath the 

 surface, ethical factors now determined extinction or 

 survival. Bad parents mean starved children, and 

 starved children will be replaced in the Struggle for 

 Life by full-fed children, and ere a few generations 

 parents without love will exist no more. The child, 

 on the other hand, which has drunk most deeply of 

 its Father's or its Mother's love lives to hand on that 

 which has spared it to a succeeding race. How much 

 of affection is handed on, or how little, matters not, 

 for Heredity works with the finest microscope, and 



