Human instincts in general are capable of modification; sometimes they
may take bizarre forms, and so we find that there are people without
children of their own--more commonly women--who will have twenty cats in
the house and look after them, or who will devote their whole lives to
the cause of the rat or the rabbit, or whatever it may be, while the
children of men are dying around them. These things are indications of
the parental instinct centred on unworthy objects. It is a common thing
to laugh at these aberrations--thoughtlessly, may we not say? While
orphans are to be found, we should do better if we try to bring together
the woman who needs to "mother" and the child who needs to be
"mothered."
Conduct is at least three-fourths of life, and the great business of
education is the direction of conduct. We have seen how modern
psychology illuminates what has been so long dark, by directing us to
our instincts as the sources of our needs, and by showing us that it is
the possibility of the education of instinct which essentially
distinguishes us from the lower animals.
We must therefore distinguish between education for motherhood and
education or instruction in motherhood. It is very important that a
woman should know the elements of infant feeding, but it is more
important that, in the first place, her whole life before she becomes a
mother--nay, even before she chooses her child's father--shall centre in
the education of her instincts for motherhood.
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