Page:Philosophical Review Volume 15.djvu/80

62 long communion of two beings who feel themselves one. His organic constitution itself fits him for participation in the feelings of others. Parental sympathy, furthermore, and his long infancy have supplied the conditions requisite for the origin of society: "Beautiful is the chain by which the all-sentient Mother supports the fellow-feelings (Mitempfindungen) of her children and builds them up from link to link. Where the creature is still insensible and rude, scarcely able to care for itself, there the care of its offspring is not entrusted to it. The birds hatch and rear their young with maternal love; the stupid ostrich, on the contrary, commits her eggs to the sand. 'She forgets' says that old Book, 'that a foot may tread upon them or a wild beast destroy them; for God has deprived her of wisdom, and imparted to her no understanding.' In virtue of one and the same organic cause through which a creature receives more brain, it receives more heat as well, bears living young or hatches them out, gives suck and acquires maternal love. The creature that is born alive is as it were a plexus of nerves from the mother-being (ein Knäuel der Nerven des mütterlichen Wesens); the self-suckled child is an offshoot of the mother-plant, which she nourishes as a part of herself. On this most intimate sympathy (dies innigste Mitgefühl) are founded in the domestic economy (Haushaltung) of the animal all the gentler impulses to which nature could uplift his species.

"Among men maternal love is of a higher kind, an offshoot of the humanity of his upright build (eine Sprosse der Humanität seiner aufgerichteten Bildung). Under the mother's eye the suckling lies upon her bosom and drinks the most delicate and finest nourishment; it is an animal custom, and one even which deforms the body, when tribes, driven by necessity, suckle their children from behind. The greatest monsters (Unmenschen) are tamed by paternal and domestic love: even the lioness is kind to her young. In the paternal house the first society arose, united by ties of blood, of confidence, and of love. Thus to break the wildness of men and to accustom them to domestic intercourse, the infancy of our species had to last long years; nature brought and held it together in gentle bonds, so that it might not scatter and forget itself, like the early-maturing animals. Then the father became the instructor of his son, as the mother had been his nurse; and so a new link of humanity (Humanität) was joined. For in this lay the ground for a necessary human society, without which no man could grow up, no plurality of men exist (keine Mehrheit von Menschen sein