The Advocate and news., 1899-04-05
The Undylag Principle.
Harriet Prescott sDOford, in Harper's Bazaar.

Harriet Prescott spOford in Harper's Bazaar
Many of the passing generation, forget
ting the inlestructibility and power of the
maternal principle, have fOretold sad re-
suits from the way in which women are
asserting themselves asserting themselves
not so much through consciousness or de-
termination as through the impossibility
of the further repression Of natures in
formed from the beginning with sovereign
force.
We have been told by science that when
the first cell swan out into the sea, living
organism, it was undoubtedly the maternal
principle, from which has since been born
all the sons of God and the daughters of
men. 1t follows that nothing in the nat
ural inheritance of the race is so strong
as this maternal principle. We see it de-
clare itself in the earliest aspect of the in
dividual; we see it not only in the chid's
first play, but in moments of exigency-as
when a little girl of 20 months, in dying
put up her trembling hand to the tears on
the face bending over her, and said Poor
mamma! poor mammal" eXpending herself
in the very act of the mother-heart. AMI
later we see it carry the woman through
fire, and into the face of death, and through
death. For it is the earthly apparition of
the divine pity; it seems to be for the full
filling force of every woman child that
Lreathes; and no woman ever becomes so
abandoned that she is abandoned of that
~ Before she goes alone, the girl baby loves
her rag baby, and is in her own mind its
undoubted mother. AS she grows older she
is the natural guardian of every smaller
child crossing her path. If you observe
her with another little girl in the street,
their arms are about each others neck at
night, if they occupy one bed they sleep
in each others arms; and the greater part
of their games are those that involve simu-
lation of this controlling instinct. 1t is safe
to say-and almost any woman who is or
who has been wife knows how true it is
that the alteration of the bride becomes in
time something like the tenderness of the
mother, and in the affection of every wife
for her husband there grows to be, from
year to year, less of the passion of the
lover and more of the yearning of the
mother In fact, the life of every woman
is one long act of maternity, and that
whether she has brought children into the
world OF not; indeed, quite as often when
she has done nothing of the kind but has
instead mothered everything that came to
her hand, as it was known of Him that
said, "More are the children of the desolate
than the children of the married wife"
Who is there that has not seen the ear
nestness of the teacher, of the aunt, of the
elder sister, the adopting mother, and has
not recognized that in that earnestness was
found an opportunity for the employment
of that quality which is the chief feature
in her being? In truth, we all know that
when by some fOrtuity we find a woman
apparently destitute of this integral quail
ity, we at once fancy that there is some.
thing unnatural and abnormal about her,
and feel as if affairs had hampered her de-
velopment, as an unyielding skull prevents
the growth and expansion of the brain.
If among such as this fortuitOus being it
should be thought that there is anything
less than lofty in the service of this ma
ternal principle and that life should be
lived unhindered of anything but learning,
business, pleasure, and the exploitation Of
peculiar genius, it may be remembered that
the old AreOpagite, classifying the hierar-
chy of heaven, placed in the highest rank
of all-above Cherubim and Dominat;ons.
Principalities and Powers--the Seraphim
who denoted love alone; and one will not 20
amiss in recalling that the Creative Prin-
ciple makes the maternal its vicegerent,
and one may think of the latter in rever.
enee as of a power that bOrrows from the
deiic.
The simplest simpleton of mother will,
on occasion, exhibit self-forgetfulness and
devotion that--Rinca Iowa ia tbo ,vroo4o.4