The most beautiful and most natural of the irradiations of love is the joy of parents at the birth of their children, a joy which is one of the strongest bonds of conjugal affection, and which helps the couple in triumphing over the conflicting elements in their characters, and in raising the moral level of their reciprocal sentiments, for it realizes the natural object of sexual union. A true woman rejoices at the progress of her pregnancy. The last pains of childbirth have hardly ceased before she laughs with joy, and pride, at hearing the first cries of the newly born. The instinctive outburst of maternal love toward the new-born child corresponds to a natural imprescriptible right of the child, for it needs the continual care of its mother. Nothing is so beautiful in the world as the radiant joy of a young mother nursing her child, and no sign of degeneration is more painful than that of mothers who abandon their children without absolute necessity, to strange hands. On the other hand reason must intervene. The instructive transports of maternal love soon require a counterpoise. It is important to prevent them from degenerating into unreasonable spoiling, by scientific and medical education of the infants. Modern medical art has made great progress in this direction, but unfortunately, egoism, negligence, routine, the desire of enjoyment, or often the poverty of many mothers prevent them from benefiting from this progress and applying it as they should. Instead of looking after their children they leave them to nurses. The latter may be necessary to help and instruct young wives during their first childbirth; but a natural mother will profit by these instructions and will herself become an excellent nurse, because she will feel her natural ties and will consecrate herself to them with the devotion of a maternal love heightened and refined by reason and knowledge. Among the lower classes the poverty and ignorance of mothers, often also their thoughtlessness and indolence, are an obstacle to the rational education of infants. "=Monkey's Love.="--Maternal love thus constitutes the most important irradiation of the sexual instincts in woman. It very easily degenerates into weakness, that is to say into unreasonable passion and blind compliance with all the faults of the child, which the mother excuses and transforms into virtues. The foibles of maternal love do much harm to the child and are often the origin of bitter deceptions. Hereditary weakness of character here plays a great, or even the principal part. Nevertheless, maternal foibles have other causes--riches, absence of culture, idleness, too few children, etc.