Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/321

Rh so deformed, so foul and impure, than is man to see to presently upon his birth, considering that to him (in manner alone) nature hath not given so much as a clean passage and way into this light; so furred he is all over and polluted with blood, so full of filth and ordure, when he entereth into the world, resembling rather a creature fresh killed and slain than newly bom; that nobody is willing to touch, to take up, to handle, dandle, kiss and clip it, but such as by nature are led to love it: and therefore, whereas in all other living creatures nature hath provided that their udders and paps should be set beneath under their bellies, in a woman only she hath seated them aloft in her breasts, as a very proper and convenient place, where she may more readily kiss, embrace, coll and huggle her babe while it sucketh; willing thereby to let us understand that the end of breeding, bearing and rearing children is not gain and profit, but pure love and mere affection. Now, if you would see this more plainly proved unto you, propose (if you please) and call to remembrance the women and men both in the old world whose hap was either first to bear children, or to see an infant newly born; there was no law then to command and compel them to nourish and bring up their young babes, no hope at all of reciprocal pleasure or thanks at their hands that induced them; no expectance of reward and recompense another day to be paid from them, as due debt for their care, pains, and cost about them: nay, if you go to that, I might say rather: That mothers had some reason to deal hardly with their young infants, and to bear in mind the injuries that they have done them, in that they endured such dangers and so great pains for them:

But our women say; It was never Homerus (surely) who wrote this, but Homeris rather: that is to say, some poetess or woman of his poetical vein, who had been herself at such a business, and felt the dolorous pangs of childbirth, or else was even then in labour, and upon the point to be delivered, feeling a mixture of bitter and sharp throes in her back, belly and flanks, when she poured out these verses: but yet, for all the sorrow and dear bargain that a mother hath of it, this kind and natural