in the unfolding
of the purpose to which nature exists, have become what they are at the
expense of earlier and weaker forms. There is a tendency to grasp and
hold, a tendency to kill and to destroy, and this, to some minds,
appears to be the strongest tendency in nature or in man. I question
it,--in fact, I deny it,--and I want that you and I should arrive at
the same conclusion respecting it. For there is another tendency
observable working from the very earliest throughout the processes of
nature, too. It is that which Henry Drummond describes as the struggle
for the life of others. If you like, we will call it mother-love. I
saw it illustrated only yesterday. A mother sheep, standing in her
place amongst the flock, was surprised with the rest at the incursion
of a mongrel dog. The flock fled instantly, but the ordinarily timid
mother stood her ground. The reason was not far to seek. There was a
little lamb cowering behind her, and she, overcoming her natural
instinct of self-preservation, turned her face to the dog to draw his
attention, if possible, to herself and deflect it from her young one.
Now, that instinct represents the tendency of which I speak, the
antithetic tendency to the other already described. It is the stronger
of the two. It indicates the goal toward which nature herself is
moving. "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together
until now," but mother-love is a prophecy of a higher yet to be. It is
the forth-going instinct, the all-ward, lifeward tendency.

Now turn to humanity. I think you will agree with me that right
through human history the same two tendencies are observable. The
farther back we go, the stronger seems the self-ward tendency. The
natural state of uncivilised man is a state of war. Man in primitive
communities only exists and flourishes by destroying other communities.
A most curious thing it is, too, that apparently our domestic and civic
virtues have grown out of this state of war. A man used to carry his
wife off by main force. She become his property. He exerted his brute
force, he magnified his own personality, as it were, in crushing other
personalities. His children were in his hands for life and death. If
he afterwards learned to love them, it was in contradistinction to the
children that were not his. That which was his, so to speak, gratified
his egotism; and, although a more beautiful relationship grew out of
it, such was the unpr