Now, as to the subject of Parental Love, and the various ways in which
it manifests itself. There are many writers who claim that parental
love in the lower animals is not identical with that of man. They
affirm that it is only a blind instinct, and, in order to mark more
strongly the distinction between man and beast, call the parental
love of the latter by the name of storgë. Speaking for myself, I must
declare that I am unable to perceive any distinction between the two,
save that in civilized man the parental love is better regulated than
among the lower animals. But, as has been seen, it is not regulated at
all among the uncivilized races, and, in truth, many of the beasts are
far better parents than most savages. Nor can I understand why the word
storgë should be applied to parental love among the lower animals and
not to the same feeling in man. Among Greek writers the word, together
with the verb from which it is derived, is applied to the love between
human parents and children. It is so applied by Plato, and in the
same sense by Sophocles and others. One argument adduced by those who
deny the identity of the feeling in both cases is that parental love
endures throughout life in man, while it expires with the adolescence
of the young in the lower animals. This is doubtless true, as a rule,
with civilized man, but in the case of the savage, as has previously
been shown, it does not last longer than that of a bird, a cat or a
dog, taking into consideration the relative duration of life. And the
reason is identical in both cases. Were this love to exist through life
in the savage, the beast or the bird, the race would become extinct,
for neither race is able to support its children longer than their
time of helplessness. The beast and the bird cannot, and the savage
will not, provide for the future. It is therefore evident that if the
young had to depend upon their parents for subsistence, they would soon
perish from lack of food. Exceptions there are to this general rule,
and always, as far as can be determined, in the case of domesticated
animals whose means of subsistence are already insured.
Several of such cases have come to my notice. I shall instance but
one. A friend of mine has two terriers, a mother and a daughter. The
strongest bond of love and fellowship unites them. They always sit
close together, and the mother playfully pinches her daughter all over.
Should they by chance become separated, even for a very short time,
the daughter comes up wagging her tail, and then licks her mother’s
nose and mouth. When hunting together, they always act in concert,
each one taking a hole, and one keeping watch while the other scrapes
away the earth. The meaning of each other’s whine or bark is perfectly
understood, and no two persons could understand their own language
better than do these dogs theirs, nor be more comprehensible to each
other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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