What does maternal instinct contribute to this sum of influences? Has maternal instinct even evolved any method of feeding, dressing, teaching, disciplining, educating children which commands attention, not to say respect? It has not.
The mothers of each nation, governed only by this rudimentary instinct, repeat from generation to generation the mistakes of their more ignorant ancestors; like a dog turning around three times before he lies down on the carpet, because his thousand-remove progenitors turned round in the grass!
That the care and education of children have developed at all is due to the intelligent efforts of doctors, nurses, teachers, and such few parents as chose to exercise their human brains instead of their brute instincts.
That the care and education of children are still at the disgraceful level generally existent is due to our leaving these noble functions to the unquestioned dominance of a force which, even among animals, is not infallible, and which, in our stage of socialisation, is practically worthless.
Of all the myths which befog the popular mind, of all false worship which prevents us from recognising the truth, this matriolatry is one most dangerous. Blindly we bow to the word "mother"—worshipping the recreative processes of nature as did forgotten nations of old time in their great phallic religions.
The processes of nature are to be studied, not worshipped; the laws of nature find best reverence in our intelligent understanding and observance, not in obsequious adoration. When the human mother shows that she understands her splendid function by developing a free, strong, healthy body; by selecting a vigorous and noble mate; by studying the needs of childhood, and meeting them with proficient services, her own or that of others better fitted; by presenting to the world a race of children who do not die in infancy, who are not preyed upon by "preventable diseases," who grow up straight, strong, intelligent, free-minded, and right-intentioned; then we shall have some reason to honour motherhood, and it will be brain-work and soul-work that we honour. Intelligence, study, experience, science, love that has more than a physical basis—human motherhood—not the uncertain rudiments of a brute instinct!
IV
PRESENT CONDITIONS
The difference between our current idea of the home to-day, and its real conditions, is easily seen. That is, it is easily seen if we are able temporarily to resist the pressure of inherited traditions, and use our individual brain power for a little while. We must remember, in attempting to look fairly, to see clearly, that a concept is a much stronger stimulus to the brain than a fact.
A fact, reaching the brain through any sensory nerve, is but an impression; and if a previous impression to the contrary exists, especially if that contrary impression has existed, untouched, for many generations, the fact has but a poor chance of acceptance. "What!" cries the astonished beholder of some new phenomenon. "Can I believe my eyes!" and he does not believe his eyes, preferring to believe the stock in trade of his previous ideas. It takes proof, much proof, glaring, positive, persistent, to convince us that what we have long thought to be so is not so. "A preconceived idea" is what we call this immoveable lump in the brain, and if the preconceived idea is deeply imbedded, knit, and rooted as an "underlying conviction," and has so existed for a very long time, then a bombardment of most undeniable facts bounds off it without effect.
Our ideas of the home are, as we have seen, among the very deepest in the brain; and to reach down into those old foundation feelings, to disentangle the false from the true, to show that the true home does not involve this group of outgrown rudiments is difficult indeed. Yet, if we will but use that wonderful power of thought which even the most prejudiced can exercise for a while, it is easy to see what are the real conditions of the average home to-day. By "average" is not meant an average of numbers. The world still has its millions of savage inhabitants who do not represent to-day, but anthropologic yesterdays, long past.