Says Goethe, "There is no outward sign of courtesy that does not rest on a deep moral foundation." He might have added "and on a great biological function." Every act of voluntary sacrifice, every impulse of compassion, mercy, tenderness, devotion, has had its inspiration and its source in this which is discredited by some as being a merely physical, and is despised, accordingly, as being an inferior process; this mystical transmutation of the mother's blood to milk, and the self-forgetting yearning wherein she yields herself as food for offspring. By the evolution, upon ever higher planes of consciousness, of this primarily instinctive sacrifice, not only Motherhood but Fatherhood too, and the Love-passion between the sexes have been fructified and purified, and uplifted down the ages. Other acts of devotion arise out of maternal ministry. But this is the intrinsic source of all. Travelling up through all the rudimentary phases of development, simultaneously and side by side with the male fierce methods for the Survival of _Fitness_, there was evolving in the female, subconsciously and secretly, this sacramental impulse which was to inaugurate a new era--an era wherein charity and ruth were to be born as response to the claims of _Unfitness_. The first woman who, of her free-will, gave her breast to her babe was the Mother of all the Humanities. She it was who prepared the way for the coming of Christ. By her, Love entered first into human consciousness. And by countless generations of such willing tender sacrifice upon the part of mothers, human love has climbed out of the darkness of blind subconscious instinct into the Light of a great transfiguration. It is weighty evidence of the evolutionary impulse inherent in the function of Lactation, that the development of this maternal trait engenders species so far higher in organisation and morale than those of creatures unequipped to suckle offspring, as to set the Mammalia in a class by themselves in the van of progressive advance. The higher organisation and morale of such result not only from the self-surrendering instinct in the mothers of species, but doubtless also from the superior nutrition promoted in the developing tissues of the young of species, by the highly-individualised food elements which are secreted by the maternal living cells. The vital significance of this new potence in blood to transform itself to milk for sustenance of offspring is emphasised by the fact that the Mammalia are warm-blooded creatures. While that this new quickening of Life by the altruistic parental instinct originates in the female shows her as medium of that Divine Influx inspiring Creative Evolution, and evolving faculty by way of living function. II