Italian labourers and servants give some of their pay always as a matter of course to their parents. It is a natural duty. And in Latin countries there are no poorhouses. They could not abide such a theory any more than could the Indians. It would seem to a Latin an impossibility that any child would leave his parents in a workhouse. Poor as they might be they would keep together. The great bond that holds a family together is the mother, always the mother. We can see this in England too, even with our weaker instinct. The mother makes the home and not the father.
And now are we not finding that sanction we were searching for? If the Madonna, the type of motherhood, appeals to all the people, men and women, is there not a reason? It is an instinct. These images and pictures of the Madonna sound on their heart-strings a chord that is perhaps the loudest and sweetest; if second to any, second only to that of God. God as father, God as mother, God as son and sacrifice, here is the threefold real Godhead of the Latins.
But with us the family tie is slight, the mother worship is faint. Our Teutonic Trinity is God the Father, God the Son, and now later God the Law. These are the realities.
For with us conduct is more and emotion is less than with the peoples of the South.
CHAPTER XXI.
CONDUCT.
Of all aspects of religion none is so difficult to understand as the relation of religion and conduct. It is ever varying. There seems to be nothing fixed about it. What does conduct arise from? It takes its origin in an instinct, and this instinct is so strong, so imperious, so almost personal, that of all the instincts it alone has a name. It is conscience.
By conscience our acts are directed.