398 Life and Immortality. 
Now, as to the subject of Parental Love, and the various 
ways in which it manifests itself, There are many writers 
who claim that parental love in the lower animals is not 
identical with that of man. They affirm that it is only a 
blind instinct, and, in order to mark more strongly the dis- 
tinction between man and beast, call the parental love of the 
latter by the name of storgé. Speaking for myself, I must 
declare that I am unable to perceive any distinction between 
the two, save that in civilized man the parental love is better 
regulated than among the lower animals. But, as has been 
seen, it is not regulated at all among the uncivilized races, 
and, in truth, many of the beasts are far better parents than 
most savages. Nor can I understand why the word storgé 
should be applied to parental love among the lower animals 
and not to the same feeling in man. Among Greek writers 
the word, together with the verb from which it is derived, 
is applied to the love between human parents and children. 
It is so applied by Plato, and in the same sense by Sophocles 
and others. One argument adduced by those who deny the 
identity of the feeling in both cases is that parental love 
endures throughout life in man, while it expires with the 
adolescence of the young in the lower animals. This is 
doubtless true, as a rule, with civilized man, but in the case 
of the savage, as has previously been shown, it does not last 
longer than that of a bird, a cat or a dog, taking into con- 
sideration the relative duration of life. And the reason is 
identical in both cases. Were this love to exist through life 
in the savage, the beast or the bird, the race would become 
extinct, for neither race is able to support its children longer 
than their time of helplessness. The beast and the bird can- 
not, and the savage will not, provide for the future. It is 
therefore evident that if the young had to depend upon their 
parents for subsistence, they would soon perish from lack of 
food. Exceptions there are to this general rule, and always, 
as far as can be determined, in the case of domesticated 
animals whose means of subsistence are already insured. 
