Chapter 16 - Page 2

source of misery. The cow has no imagination, and for that reason cannot
think how it might have saved the child if it had done this or that, and
its grief, founded in its physical being, lasts but a very short time.
It is only a condition, and not that sorrow which becomes exaggerated
to the point of despair, thanks to idleness and satiety. The cow has not
that reasoning faculty which would enable it to ask the why. Why endure
all these tortures? What was the use of so much love, if the little
ones were to die? The cow has no logic which tells it to have no more
children, and, if any come accidentally, to neither love nor nurse them,
that it may not suffer. But our wives reason, and reason in this way,
and that is why I said that, when a man does not live as a man, he is
beneath the animal."

"But then, how is it necessary to act, in your opinion, in order to
treat children humanly?" I asked.

"How? Why, love them humanly."

"Well, do not mothers love their children?"

"They do not love them humanly, or very seldom do, and that is why they
do not love them even as dogs. Mark this, a hen, a goose, a wolf, will
always remain to woman inaccessible ideals of animal love. It is a rare
thing for a woman to throw herself, at the peril of her life, upon an
elephant to snatch her child away, whereas a hen or a sparrow will not
fail to fly at a dog and sacrifice itself utterly for its children.
Observe this, also. Woman has the power to limit her physical love for
her children, which an animal cannot do. Does that mean that, because of
this, woman is inferior to the animal? No. She is superior (and even to
say superior is unjust, she is not superior, she is different), but she
has other duties, human duties. She can restrain herself in the matter
of animal love, and transfer her love to the soul of the child. That is
what woman's role should be, and that is precisely what we do not see in
our society. We read of the heroic acts of mothers who sacrifice their
children in the name of a superior idea, and these things seem to us
like tales of the ancient world, which do not concern us. And yet I
believe that, if the mother has not some ideal, in the name of which she
can sacrifice the animal feeling, and if this force finds no employment,
she will transfer it to chimerical attempts to physically preserve her
child, aided in this task by the doctor, and she will suffer as she does
suffer.

"So it was with my wife. Whether there was one child or five, the
feeling remained the same. In fact, it was a little better when there
had been five. Life was always poisoned with fear for the children, not
only from their real or imaginary diseases, but even by their simple