Here, again, Nature or “the Will-to-Live” is strongly in evidence in its careful and persistent endeavor to secure the welfare of the young creature. The “will to protect and provide for the young,” manifest in Nature, is evidenced not only in the implanting in the race of the feeling and desire to maintain more or less permanent matingunion on the part of the parents. Nature has in view not merely the birth of the young creature, but also its protection after birth until such time as it is able to take care of itself. For the first end, it superimposes the “mating instinct” upon the emotional nature of the living things; for the second, it superimposes the “love of offspring,” and the “family feeling” upon the nature of the animal or man. In this last, we have the key to many important desires and activities of man and of the lower animals.
Science has established the truth of the general proposition that, “The degree of the manifestation of the mating instinct in the direction of a more or less permanent association between the male and female animal, and in the establishment and maintenance of the family group, is directly determined by the degree in which the male parent is needed to provide for, and to aid the mother and the offspring.” This statement refers to the species, not to the particular individual.
In many cases, the association of the mates extends over merely the period of the immediate needs of the offspring and the nursing mother. The young of the reptiles and fishes require no paternal or parental care, and as a consequence there is no real union or mated association between the parents; even where there is a semblance of permanency in the union, it will be found that the female requires some degree of temporary protection for a short period preceding the birth of the young. All such association among the reptiles and fishes is seen to depend entirely upon the welfare of the future offspring.
Birds mate and form a union which lasts only during the nesting season, as a rule. The male is needed to protect the nest, to feed the brooding henbird, and to feed the young. The cuckoo, and similar neststealing birds which lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, and are thereby relieved of any care of hatching the eggs or feeding the young, display no real attachment for their mates beyond the period of the temporary sexual impulse, and they form no mating unions of even the most brief duration. Such birds, always relieved of the responsibilities of parenthood, are the “varietists” of the bird family, associating promiscuously and indiscriminately, and not remaining in each other’s society for any definite period.
Not only this, but even the real mothers in the animal kingdom manifest material affection only in the degree of the requirements of the young, and only during the period in which such protection is needed. For instance, the reptilemothers and the fishmothers have no responsibility for their offspring, the young creatures being able to take care of themselves from birth; consequently the motherfish or motherreptile in such cases shows no sign of maternal affection; this is also true of the insects. Yet, strange to say, such creatures usually are found to possess an instinctive affection for their eggs, and will even risk or sacrifice their lives in order to protect their eggs, or else in order to deposit the eggs in conditions favorable for their protection and development; this done, the emotional feeling, affection, and desire pass away, having served Nature’s purpose adequately.
The instinctive care and trouble manifested by the female insect in providing a promising and appropriate place for depositing her eggs is one of the great wonders of natural history. The housewife experiences proof of this instinct when she discovers valuable clothing destroyed by the moth, because the mothermoth has sought a nice dark closet containing soft woolen fabrics in which to deposit her eggs. The wasp which stings into insensibility the spider, in order to deposit her eggs in the living body of the latter so that her future offspring may be provided with fresh food, is another illustration of this law of Nature. The ordinary dungbeetle evidences a similar care and solicitude for the welfare of her eggs. Yet none of these creatures manifests even the slightest degree of affection for their young when they are hatched—their young do not need such affection and care, and, consequently, the mother creatures are not endowed with the feelings and desires leading to these.
Professor William James says: “Why does the hen submit herself to the tedium of incubating such a fearfully uninteresting set of objects as a nestful of eggs, unless she have some sort of a prophetic instinct of the result? Why does a particular maiden turn our wits upside down? The common man can only say, ‘Of course we love the maiden,—that beautiful soul clad in that perfect form, so palpably and flagrantly made from all eternity to be loved!’ And so, probably, does each animal feel about the particular actions it tends to perform in response to certain stimuli. To the broody hen, the notion seems monstrous that there should be a creature in the world to whom a nestful of eggs was not the utterly fascinating, precious and nevertobetoomuchsatupon object which it is to her. What a delicious thrill may not shake a fly, when at last she discovers the one particular leaf (or other object or material) that out of all the world can stimulate her egglaying? Need she care or know anything about the future maggot and its food?”
You have noticed how, when the offspring no longer require attention, care, and food, the motheranimal thrusts them away from her and compels them thenceforth to conduct their business of life “on their own.” When that period has passed, all her maternal affection seems to die out; and thenceforth the young animals are no more to the mother than are any of the many other animals of her acquaintance. The need of the offspring has passed—the emotion has played its part, and the desire passes away.
Even in human life we often see the strongest affection grow up in the heart of a woman for some motherless child not connected with her by ties of blood; this particularly if the care of the young child has temporarily devolved upon her. Even the coldesthearted woman usually will learn to love a babe for whom she is compelled constantly to care and provide; and even the hardesthearted man will feel an affection for a child for whom he is compelled to care in person—there is “something inside of them” which makes them act and feel that way. Farmers know that if a motherless lamb is once permitted by a mothersheep to nurse at her teats, then that lamb will thereafter be carefully protected by that mothersheep, even though she did not welcome it before the nursing, and, indeed, had to be coaxed into allowing it to nurse in the first instance. The need of the young creature awakens the instinctive affection and desire of the older animal.
It is held that the instinctive feeling and desire of the human creature for a permanent mating and union—the creation and maintenance of “the family”—arose from the longcontinued needs of the human mother and child for the protection of the father. By the time that one child was comparatively able to take care of itself, another infant was there to be protected and provided for. Says Saleeby: “The unique helplessness of the human baby—one of the most wonderful and little appreciated facts in the whole of Nature to eyes that can see—has a supremely practical point of view. The principle of Marriage is that of survivalvalue. Nature’s invariable criterion is that of survivalvalue or service to raceculture. That form of Marriage which does not permit the babies to survive, the babies do not permit it to survive. It is not a question of the father’s taste and fancy; but of what he leaves above ground when he is under ground.”
This then is the deep soil from which has sprung and grown the wonderful love of man and woman for each other, in its highest and most beautiful forms, as well as in its crudest and ugliest phases. From this soil also has sprung the beautiful love of parents for their children, of children for parents. It is the cause of the “cling to” feeling and desire so marked in the woman and the child; of the desire to be “clung to” by the woman and the child which lies deeply embedded in the soul of the man. The soil is “Nature’s needs for the welfare and perpetuation of the race”; the blossoms and