156 The Morality of Nature 



in this sacred function of reproduction, which is the one 

 tie to noble ideals. 



And even in those species where apparently the offspring 

 are abandoned to fate by parents who never recognize a 

 duty toward them (as we saw in a study of the fishes) a 

 tremendous effort is made, at the cost of the individual 

 parents, to place the offspring in favorable circumstances, 

 according to inherited instinct. The thousands of fish which 

 make long journeys at terrible risks to deposit their spawn 

 in their native waters high up in a river of innumerable 

 dangers, these creatures are fulfilling the same purpose as 

 the coral polyp which reaches out and plants its young 

 upon the apex of its own structure. 



In all species where there is any sign of upward evolution 

 this prime impulse persists. It is to be seen in the highest 

 of brutes as well developed as in primitive man, and there 

 even better than in man of barbarism or retrograde civi- 

 lization. Its function in simple humanity provides a test 

 for the individual unselfishness by which the race self pre- 

 vails. Man unarmed is defenseless in isolation, and depends 

 for self maintenance upon the co-operative altruistic union 

 in which his race was so evidently evolved. Therefore one 

 of the highest functions of sex is this perpetual preservation 

 of individual sacrifice. At man's birth, nay before his 

 conception, the question of self abnegation is raised, and 

 put to his progenitors, and the answer is life or death to 

 the new born or prospective offspring. In nature's dispensa- 

 tion no one of these helpless scions can survive, unless a 

 mother responds to the demands of nature for self-sacrific- 

 ing devotion. This demand is the test, not only of fitness in 



