For instance,
experimental breeding of the fowl reveals the existence of the brooding
instinct as a definite unit, which enters, or does not enter, into the
composition of the individual, and which is quite distinct from the
capacity to produce eggs. Here is a definite distinction suggested, for
the case of the fowl, between two really distinct things which, for
several years past, I have called respectively physical and psychical
motherhood. The analysis will doubtless go far further, but already the
facts of experiment help us to realize the composition of the individual
mother--for instance, the number of possible variants, and the
non-necessity of a connection between the capacity to produce children
and the parental instinct upon which the care of them depends, and
without which entire and perfect motherhood cannot be.
The Mendelians are teaching us, too, that their "factors," the units of
which we are made, are often intertangled or mutually repellent. If
such-and-such goes into the germ-cell, so must something else; or if the
one, then never the other. There may thus be naturally determined
conditions of entire womanhood; just as one may be externally a woman,
yet lack certain of the fractional constituents which are necessary for
the perfect being. Complete womanhood, like genius--rarer though not
more valuable--depends upon the co-existence of _many_ factors, some of
which may be coupled and segregated together in gameto-genesis, while
others may be quite independent, only chance determining the throw of
them.
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