The same abruptness, insatiability, eagerness, the same rage, are noticeable in its whole conduct. The cuckoos are notoriously unsociable, even in migration individualistic. They jealously guard their territorial “preserves,” and verify in many ways the old myth that they are sparrow-hawks in disguise. The parasitic habit is consonant with their general character.
The species consist predominantly of males. The preponderance is probably about five to one; though one observer makes it five times greater. In so male a species, it is not surprising to find degenerate maternal instincts.[45]
Regarding spiders and the greater number of insects, we are told that the males entirely neglect their young; it is
in the female that the care for offspring first awakens. And this is natural, for the eggs have been formed in her body; she has laid them, and has been conscious of them; they form, in a way, an integral part of her individuality.... With insects maternal forethought sometimes amounts to a sort of divining prescience which the doctrine of evolution alone can explain.[46]
Among the males of mammals below man the love of offspring seems to be almost entirely wanting.
We must here remark, that whatever the form of sexual association among mammals, the male has always much less affection for his young than the female. Even in monogamous species, when the male keeps with the female, he does so more as chief than as father. At times he is inclined to commit infanticide and to destroy the offspring, which, by absorbing all the attention of his female, thwart his amours. Thus, among the large felines, the mother is obliged to hide her young ones from the male during the first few days after birth, to prevent his devouring them.[47]
The fact is obvious that among the orders of life below man but little paternal affection has been developed, and with a more extended knowledge of the past history of the human race comes the assurance that under earlier conditions of society, and in fact, until a comparatively recent time, little notice was taken of the paternal relation—that kinship and all the rights of succession were reckoned through the mother. In other words, motherhood was the primary bond by which society was bound together.
Although under higher conditions of civilized life, males have at length come to manifest much interest in the well-being of their offspring, yet that paternal affection is not a primary instinct is shown by the fact that such interest, even at the present time, extends only to those individuals born in wedlock. Men are solicitous only for the welfare of those who are to succeed to their names and fortunes; hence, although in later times the paternal instinct has been considerably re-enforced, it is plain that the interest of fathers for their offspring has in the past been largely the result of custom, association, pride, desire for self-perpetuation or duplication, or some other form of self-aggrandizement.
Mr. Darwin says: “The feeling of pleasure from society is probably an extension of the parental or filial affections, since the social instinct seems to be developed by the young remaining for a long time with their parents.”[48] Although Mr. Darwin does not admit it, from his reasoning it is plain that the maternal instinct is the root whence sympathy has sprung, and that it is the source whence the cohesive quality in the tribe originated. Regarding the importance of association or combination in early groups Mr. Darwin remarks:
When two tribes of primeval man, living in the same country, came into competition, if (other circumstances being equal) the one tribe included a great number of courageous, sympathetic, and faithful members, who were always ready to warn each other of danger, to aid and defend each other, this tribe would succeed better and conquer the other.... Selfish and contentious people will not cohere, and without coherence nothing can be effected. A tribe rich in the above qualities would spread and be victorious over other tribes.... Thus the social and moral qualities would tend slowly to advance and be diffused throughout the world.[49]
Since, then, it has been proved by scientists that without an association of interests and the coherence of the tribe the social instincts must have remained weak, and since it has been shown by them that without concerted action the higher faculties, including the moral sense, could not have been developed; and since, furthermore, the influences which have led to this development are those growing out of the maternal instincts, may we not conclude that all of those qualities which make man pre-eminently a social animal—his love of society, his desire for the good-will of his kind, his perception of right and wrong, and, finally, that sympathy which at last gradually extending beyond the limits of race and country proclaims the brotherhood of man and the unity of life on the earth—all these characteristics, are but an extension of maternal affection, an outgrowth of that early bond between mother and child, which, while affecting the entire line of development, still remains unchanged and unchangeable.