"This time for him is not lost. In his own way he also is at school, and learning lessons which will one day be equally needed by humanity. The acquisitions of the manly life are as necessary to human character as the virtues which gather their sweetness by the cradle; and these robuster elements--strength, courage, manliness, endurance, self-reliance--could only have been secured away from domestic cares.... The Evolution of a Father is not so beautiful a process as the Evolution of a Mother, but it was almost as formidable a problem to attack.... If Maternity was at a feeble level in the lower reaches of Nature, Paternity was non-existent.... When we leave the Birds and pass on to the Mammals, the Fathers are nearly all backsliders. Many are not only indifferent to their young, but hostile; and among the Carnivora the Mothers have frequently to hide their little ones in case the father eats them." In place of saying, therefore, that Love sprang in, and has developed from the exercise of the parental function, we must say that Love--in all its higher aspects--sprang and has developed in the _maternal_ function. But since every attribute, in order to be conscious and realised, is not only rooted but is reared in living function--out of what living function did Mother-love evolve? In the exercise of what vital processes has it been fostered and furthered? In so far as these involve sacrifice of self in the interests of the child, the maternal ante-natal processes are processes of self-surrender. But these, when once incurred, are subconscious and involuntary. The prospective mother has no choice but to submit to physiological exactions. And only a few women--those in whom maternal love is deep beyond the average--feel affection for their infants before birth. Since love must have an object upon which to exercise its faculties and lavish its devotion, it is not, therefore, until the babe is in the mother's arms that the Love-attribute begins to function. And then the primal fount of all conscious and voluntary human selflessness and sacrifice springs afresh in the individual when, in yearning toward the helpless being in her arms, she wells with tenderness and gives herself to be its life. In the altruistic tender yearning of the mother to her babe, whereat her blood transforms itself to milk, Human Love first sprang and functioned consciously. _This is my Body which is given for you.... This is my Blood ... which is shed for you._