r
advisers and friends.[15] This chapter is intended to do its bit
toward such a general understanding.

[Footnote 15: "Appropriate educational processes might perhaps guide
this enormous impulsive energy toward the maintenance instead of the
destruction of marriage and the family. But up to the present time,
education with respect to this moral issue has commonly lacked any
such constructive method. The social standard and the individual
impulse have simply collided, and the individual has been left to
resolve the conflict, for the most part by his own resources."--G.A.
Coe: _Psychology of Religion_, p. 150.]

PARENTAL INSTINCT AND TENDER EMOTION

=Until They Can Fly.= Only half of Nature's need is met by the
reproductive instinct. Her carefulness in this direction would be
largely wasted without that other impulse which she has planted, the
impulse to protect the new lives until they are old enough to fend for
themselves. The higher the type of life and the greater the future
demands, the longer is the period of preparation and consequent period
of parental care. This fact, coupled with man's power for lasting
relationships through the organization of permanent sentiments, has
made the, bond between parent and child an enduring one. Needless to
say, this relationship is among the most beautiful on earth, the
source of an incalculable amount of joy and gain. However, as we have
already suggested, there lurks here, as in every beneficent force, a
danger. If parents forget what they are for, and try to foster a more
than ordinary tie, they make themselves a menace to those whom they
most love. Any exaggeration is abnormal. If the childhood bond is
over-strong, or the childhood dependence too long cultivated, then the
relationship has overstepped its purpose, and, as we shall later see,
has laid the foundation for a future neurosis.

=Mothering the World.= Probably no instinct has so many ways of
indirect expression as this mothering impulse of protection. Aroused
by the cry of a child in distress, or by the thought of the weakness,
or need, or ill-treatment of any defenseless creature, this
mother-father impulse is at the root of altruism, gratitude, love,
pity, benevolence, and all unselfish actions.

There is still a great difference of opinion as to how man's spiritual
nature came into being; still discussion as to whether it developed
out of crude beginnings as the rest of his physical and mental
endowment h