ich may set in
motion the thought-waves of pity. For of all living creatures born into
this world of pompous ignorance and maudlin solicitude to struggle for
precarious existence from the cradle to the grave, by reason of the
unnatural conditions of our vaunted hygienic and educational
systems--generously termed "civilization"--there is surely nothing quite
so "poor," so woefully devoid of practical protection, and, in its
exceptional helplessness, so weakly gushed over and little understood as
the child of frail humanity.

"The cause of the poor"--thus the legend runs--"in deity's or demon's
name." For truly, of the two angels which, we are told, attend upon the
birth of credulous mankind and the initial stages of development, the
malign influence would seem to be ever in the ascendant, irrespective of
the social status of the, more or less, pre-natally affected, innocent
reproduction wherein is focused the latent follies and delinquencies of
the race, as portrayed in the course of its long pangenesis.

Now, incredible though it may seem and deplorable though it be, the
secret which has revealed itself with absolute force and conviction to
the judicial minds of unemotional scientific observers is simply this:
that the children of the present generation are, as an incontestable
matter of actual fact, really brought into this world alive and some
attain to maturity, not through maternal intelligence, but rather, _in
spite of mothers_. This is a hard saying but none the less a truth. They
survive in spite of the idiosyncracies of their fondly irrational,
untutored mothers rather than because of any practical, efficient
effort these contribute towards the well being and survival of their
offspring. This, as a general rule, is unhappily beyond question. It is
a rule which has, naturally, many exceptions,--many brave and brilliant
ones--these however only serve to confirm it.

Comte, writing as an authority on the subject, made the assertion that
there is hardly an example on record of a child of superior genius whose
mother did not possess also a superior order of mind. As an example he
cites: The mother of Napoleon Bonaparte, high-souled, heroic and
beautiful; the mother of Julius Caesar, a singularly fine character,
wise and strong; the mother of Goethe,--affectionately termed: "The
delight of her children, the favourite of poets and princes--one whose
splendid talents and characteristics were reproduced in her son." Th