But the "tender emotion" as McDougall calls it, is aroused by other children than one's own, and by others than children. It is called out particularly by things that are by nature helpless and delicate, but may be aroused by adults who are placed in situations where they are suffering and powerless. Samson, shorn of his strength, has been a traditional occasion for pathos. The sick, the bereaved, the down-and-outers, the failures, the forlorn and broken-hearted, call out in most men an impulse to befriend and protect. Those who have been dealt with unjustly or severely by their associates and society and who have no redress, the poverty-stricken, the criminal who has been punished and remains an exile, the maimed and deformed, the widow and orphan, all these, arouse, apart from the restraining force exercised by other instincts and habits, such as anger and disgust, a natural tendency to pity and aid. The parental instinct in its direct and primitive form is responsible for the closeness of family relations, a most important consideration in the case of humans who have, as already discussed, a long period of infancy during which they are absolutely dependent on their elders. In the higher species, writes McDougall, "The protection and cherishing of the young is the constant and all-absorbing occupation of the mother, to which she devotes all her energies, and in the course of which she will at any time undergo privation, pain, and death. The instinct becomes more powerful than any other, and can override any other, even fear itself."[2] Wherever the power of the parental instinct has waned, as in Greek and Roman society, the civilization in which that degeneration occurred was subjected to rapid decay.[3] [Footnote 2: McDougall: _loc. cit._, p. 67.] [Footnote 3: _Cf. Ibid._, p. 271.] The parental instinct in its more general form of pity and protectiveness toward all weak and suffering things is, in the minds of many moralists, the origin of all altruistic sentiments and actions, and at the same time the moral indignation which insists on the punishment of wrong-doers. It is clearly apparent in such movements as the Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children or to Animals, the antivivisection crusade, and the like. But according to such a distinguished moralist as John Stuart Mill, the whole system of justice and punishment has its origins in this tender feeling for those who have been wronged.