The Forerunner, vol 1 | Page 6

immaturity, compared with the majestic quenchless flame of life and
love we ought to worship.
We have taken the assistant for the principal, a tributary for the main
stream; we have exalted Eros, the god of man's desire, and paid no heed
to that great goddess of mother love to whom young Eros is but a
running footman.

We are right to worship love, in all its wide, diverging branches; the
love that is gratitude, love that is sympathy. love that is admiration,
love that is gift and service; even the love that is but hunger--mere
desire.
But when we talk of the Life Force, the strong stream of physical
immortality, which has replaced form with form and kept the stream
unbroken through 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