The Forerunner, vol 1 | Page 6

the ages, we ought to understand whereof we speak.
That force is predominant. Under its ceaseless, upward pressure have all creatures risen from the first beginning. Resistlessly it pushes through the ages; stronger than pain or fear or anger, stronger than selfishness or pride, stronger than death. It rises like a mighty tree, branching and spreading through the changing seasons.
Death gnaws at it in vain. Death destroys the individual, not the race; death plucks the leaves, the tree lives on. That tree is motherhood.
The life process replaces one generation with another, each equal to, yes, if possible, superior to, the last. This mighty process has enlarged and improved throughout the ages, until it has grown from a mere division of the cell--its first step still--to the whole range of education by which the generations are replenished socially as well as physically. From that vague impulse which sets afloat a myriad oyster germs, to the long patience of a brooding bird; from the sun-warmed eggs of a reptile to the nursed and guarded young of the higher mammals; so runs the process and the power through lengthening years of love and service, lives by service, grows with service. The longer the period of infancy, the greater the improvement of species.
The fish or insect, rapidly matured, reaches an early limit. He must be competent to Iive as soon as he begins, and is no more competent at his early ending. The higher life form, less perfect at beginning, spending more time dependent on its mother, receives from her more power. First from her body's shelter, the full, long upbuilding; safety while she is safe; the circling guard of wise, mature, strong life, of conscious care, besides the unconscious bulwark of self-interest. Contrast this with the floating chances of the spawn!
Then the rich, sure food of mother-milk, the absolute adaptation, the whole great living creature an alembic to gather from without, and distil to sweet perfection, what the child needs. Contrast this with the chances of new-born fish or fly, or even those of the bird baby, whose mother must search wide for the food she brings. The mammal has it with her.
Then comes the highest stage of all, where the psychic gain of the race is transmitted to the child as well as the physical. This last and noblest step in the life process we call education. education is differentiated motherhood. It is social motherhood. It is the application to the replenishment and development of the race of the same great force of ever-growing life which made the mother's milk.
Here are the three governing laws of life: To Be; To Re-Be; To Be Better. The life force demands Existence. And we strain every nerve to keep ourselves alive. The life force demands Reproduction. And our physical machinery is shifted and rearranged repeatedly, with arrayed impulses to suit--to keep the race alive. Then, most imperative of all, the life force demands Improvement. And all creation groaneth and travaileth in this one vast endeavor. Not merely this?thing--permanently; not merely more of this thing--continuously; but better things, ever better and better types, has been the demand of life upon us, and we have fulfilled it.
Under this last and highest law, as the main factor in securing to the race its due improvement, comes that supreme officer of the life process, the Mother. Her functions are complex, subtle, powerful, of measureless value.
Her first duty is to grow nobly for her mighty purpose. Her next is to select, with inexorable high standard, the fit assistant for her work. The third--to fitly bear, bring forth, and nurse the child. Following these, last and highest of all, comes our great race-process of social parentage, which transmits to each new generation the gathered knowledge, the accumulated advantages of the past.
When mother and father labor and save for years to give their children the "advantages" of civilization; when a whole state taxes itself to teach its children; that is the Life Force even more than the direct impulse of personal passion. The pressure of progress, the resistless demand of better conditions for our children, is life's largest imperative, the fullest expression of motherhood.
But even if we confine ourselves for the time being to the plane of mere replenishment, to that general law under which animals continue in existence upon earth, even here the brief period of pre-paternal excitement is but a passing hour compared to the weeks and months, yes, years, in the higher species, of maternal service, love and care. The human father, too, toils for his family; but the love, the power, the pride of fatherhood are not symbolized by the mischievous butterfly baby we have elected to worship.
Cupid has nothing to do with either motherhood or fatherhood in the large human sense. His range is far short of the