"The history of the civilization (Kulturgeschichte) of our race, is, so to speak, the history of the mother-influence. Our ideas of morality, justice, order, all these are simply mother-ideas. The mother began our culture in that epoch in which, like the man, she was autodidactic. In the epoch of the Church Fathers, the highly educated mother saved our civilization and gave it a new turn, and only the highly educated mother will save us out of the moral corruption of our age. Taken individually also, we can mark the ennobling, elevating influence which educated mothers have exercised over our great men. Let us strive as much as possible to have highly accomplished mothers, wives, friends, and then the wounds which we receive in the struggle for life will not bleed as they do now" (174. 367).
The history of civilization is the story of the mother, a story that stales not with repetition. Richter, in his Levana, makes eloquent appeal:—
"Never, never has one forgotten his pure, right-educating mother! On the blue mountains of our dim childhood, towards which we ever turn and look, stand the mothers who marked out for us from thence our life; the most blessed age must be forgotten ere we can forget the warmest heart. You wish, O woman, to be ardently loved, and forever, even till death. Be, then, the mothers of your children."
Tennyson in The Foresters uses these beautiful words: "Every man for the sake of the great blessed Mother in heaven, and for the love of his own little mother on earth, should handle all womankind gently, and hold them in all honour." Herein lies the whole philosophy of life. The ancient Germans were right, who, as Tacitus tells us, saw in woman sanctum aliquid et providum, as indeed the Modern German Weib (cognate with our wife) also declares, the original signification of the word being "the animated, the inspirited."
CHAPTER IV.
THE CHILD'S TRIBUTE TO THE FATHER.
If the paternal cottage still shuts us in, its roof still screens us; and with a father, we have as yet a prophet, priest, and king, and an obedience that makes us free.—Carlyle.
To you your father should be as a god.—Shakespeare.
Our Father, who art in Heaven.—Jesus.
Father of all! in every age,
In every clime adored,
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord.—Pope.