Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/308

294 woman is gifted with intellect, the animal is not; the woman has memory, the animal has none; and thus it is that the maternal instinct ceases with the necessity of providing food for the young; the maternal emotion in the human mother ends only with her life. But yet again, how tender is the mother with her new-born babe, compared to the exhibition of the same emotion toward her half-grown child!

The differentia that exist between the maternal and paternal emotions are such as characterize other expressions of sexual cerebration. I have already called attention to some of them. Among men, as the mind assumes its higher moral and intellectual development, these emotions are more nearly alike in the sexes, so far as constancy and care are concerned. If we take into consideration the frequency of the charge against men of desertion of family and children, and the extreme rarity of this charge against woman, we perceive that the paternal emotion must be accompanied by a certain degree of moral sense in order to equal the maternal emotion, which alone, and unaided by any mental accessory, is, as a rule, capable of the most heroic sacrifice. I think I may end our study of the maternal emotion here, with no doubt in my mind, and with but little chance of valid objections on the part of others, that it is purely the result of sexual organization; that not indirectly, but directly, it is the psychical component of the reproductive faculty, and as such is notably an example of sexual cerebration.

Love is the attraction between the sexes. The word is wrongly used to express a great variety of relations and emotions. Spinoza says that, "between appetite and desire there is no difference, except so far as the latter implies consciousness; desire is self-conscious appetite." It is important that the presence of consciousness be not allowed to obscure the fundamental condition of things in the brain. Because of the affinity between vital structure and instinct or impulse, the organic reaction becomes evident as a condition of consciousness, overlooking the primary cause. "The striving after a pleasing impression, or the effort to avoid a painful one, is at bottom a physical consequence of the nature of the ganglionic cell in its relation to a certain stimulus; and the reaction or desire becomes the motive of a general action on the part of the individual, for the purpose of satisfying a want or of shunning an ill" (Maudsley). Any of these self-conscious appetites may become the main-spring of a voluntary action. A desire which so results is gradually evolved out of an unconscious organic appetite into an emotion, or a series of intelligently-connected efforts. The physiological relation existing between the sexes is a part of the organic law of reproduction. The action of this law finds its expression through the brain, instinctively or emotionally in desire. This participation of the brain in the reproductive stimulus is an absolute necessity in order to place the sexes in a relation favorable to an observance of one of the laws of their existence. With the gradual