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48
1909]
the nurses for the period of a month or more previous to the termination of their
pregnancy. But the story is exactly similar wherever a real attempt has been
made to save infant lives, and consequently the small and successful beginnings
that have been made, not merely in isolated English cities, but in every
civilized country, is certain to become so great a movement that no community
can afford to sit still and do nothing, for to do so would be to greatly neglect
their duty. This remark does not apply to local authorities only, but to the
public themselves, as well as to religious and philanthropic bodies, who
must do all they can to assist in putting an end to the shameful waste of
human life that is taking place among those infants who, lacking instinct like
beasts, are entirely dependant on what their mothers do for them.
'And the mother," as Dr. Saleeby puts it, "is also human, and shares
the human loss of instinct. She has only the maternal instinct in its essence.
That could not be permitted to lapse by natural selection, since humanity
could never have been evolved at all if women did not love Dabies. But of all
the details she is bereft. She has, instead, an immeasurably greater thing,
intelligence; but whilst intelligence can learn everything, it has everything to
learn. Instinct can learn nothing, but is perfect from the first within its
impassable limits. It is this lapse of instinctive aptitude that constitutes the
cardinal difficulty against which we are assembled. The mother cat not
merely has a far less helpless young creature to succour, but she has a far
superior inherent or instinctive equipment. She knows the best food for her
kitten, she does not give it ' the same food as we had ourselves,' but her own
breast invariably. None of us can teach her anything as to washing her
kitten, or keeping it warm. She can even play with it and so educate it, in so
far as it need education. There are mothers in all classes of the community
who should be ashamed to look a tabby cat in the face," and, therefore,
women, being dependent on their intelligence, are often absolutely ignorant,
because it has not been awakened by education, and therefore, must be taught, so
that they may bring up their children in health and strength and not predestine
them either to a premature grave or a life of ill health. It may be pleaded
that this will tend to remove parental responsibility, but surely if parents
destroy their children through ignorance, the State ought to step in and
prevent them. This is no new doctrine, for in ancient Sparta Lycurgus,
the great lawgiver, who has already been alluded to in another direction
held the opinion that children were not so much the property of their
parents as of the commonwealth, and therefore exerted himself to
see that they were born of healthy parents and were properly reared.