As far as the necessities for it go in the animal world, nearly all animals have a very strong sense of the responsibility of motherhood--unless they have become over-civilised, or live under unnatural circumstances. A striking example of the consequences of the latter state of being is shown by "Barbara," that thrillingly attractive Polar bear in the Zoo, whose twelfth and thirteenth infants were only the other day condemned to follow their brothers and sisters to an early grave through their parents'--and especially their mother's--gross stupidity about their bringing-up and welfare. And we who are human animals, given by God conscious souls, ought to realise the fact that civilisation and pampered environment have enormously blunted our natural instincts in this respect, just as they have Barbara's, and so we should try to restore the loss by consciously cultivating our understanding of the subject and deliberately realising the tremendous responsibilities we incur by bringing children into the world. When we think about the matter quietly, the magnitude of it is almost overwhelming, and yet there are hundreds and thousands of women who never give it a serious thought! They have some vague idea that to have children is the inevitable result of matrimony, and that if they pay others to feed and clothe the little creatures, and give them some instruction in the way that they should go, their own part of the affair is finished. That, until a child is grown to an age to judge for itself, the parents will be held responsible for their stewardship of its body and soul at the great tribunal of God does not strike them, and it is only perhaps when the boomerang of their neglect has returned to them and blasted them with calamity that they become conscious of their past negligence.