mediately into the next generation,
the higher organisms divide off a very small portion of their
protoplasm to make an egg or seed while the parent organism lives on
to produce eggs or seeds on subsequent occasions.

While the parental sacrifice in eggs or spermatozoa is minute and
inconsiderable in the higher animals, the sacrifices subsequent to
this initial division are incalculably greater in higher animals than
in the lower organisms. We can cite no better example than the human
subject. The human ovum, divided off from the maternal organism, is a
minute globule of protoplasm, almost microscopic in size. The
sacrifice of the mother in producing the ovum is inconsiderable, but
the production of the ovum is simply the first step in the sacrifice
which the maternal organism makes.

The fertilized ovum makes a lodgment on the inner surface of the
uterus or womb and begins immediately to absorb its nourishment from
the maternal organism. It soon develops a heart and blood vessels so
related to the blood vessels of the mother that throughout its
intra-uterine existence the mother's blood supplies the growing child
all of the substance that is built up into bone, muscle, brain and
glands, preparing the young child to come into the world a living,
breathing, sentient organism. These draughts upon the vitality of the
maternal organism are so great that they frequently result in a very
sensible depletion of the mother's physical power, particularly
manifest in the depletion of the blood.

During the period when the young child is developing within the body
of the mother, she must make other sacrifices, viz., the withdrawal
from society more closely within the four walls of her home where she
busies herself many days in preparation of the wardrobe for the
expected child. Then there are sacrifices incident to childbirth
represented especially in the pain and travail of parturition. During
the first year of the child's life in normal cases, it draws its
nourishment from its mother's breast. This nourishment in turn is
elaborated by the milk-secreting glands from the mother's blood--still
further depleting her system. During its childhood and youth the
mother prepares the food, clothing and shelter of her child at no
small expense of her own time and strength. For years the mother holds
herself ready to watch by the bedside of her child should he fall
sick, and there is hardly a mother in the land who has not spent many
nig