Part 1 (1/2)

The Forerunner.

by C. P. Gilman.

THEN THIS

The news-stands bloom with magazines, They flame, they blaze indeed; So bright the cover-colors glow, So clear the startling stories show, So vivid their pictorial scenes, That he who runs may read.

Then This: It strives in prose and verse, Thought, fancy, fact and fun, To tell the things we ought to know, To point the way we ought to go, So audibly to bless and curse, That he who reads may run.

A SMALL G.o.d AND A LARGE G.o.dDESS

The ancient iconoclast pursued his idol-smas.h.i.+ng with an ax. He did not regard the feelings of the wors.h.i.+ppers, and they, with similar indifference to his, promptly destroyed him.

The modern iconoclast, wiser from long experience, practices the kindergarten art of subst.i.tution; enters without noise, and dexterously replaces the old image with a new one.

Often the wors.h.i.+ppers do not notice the change. They never spend their time in discriminating study of their idol, being exclusively occupied in wors.h.i.+pping it.

The task herein undertaken is not so easy. We can hardly expect to remove the particular pet deity of millions of people for thousands of years--an especially conspicuous little image at that, differing from other G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses; and subst.i.tute another figure, three times his size, of the opposite s.e.x, and thirty years older--without somebody's noticing it.

Yet this is precisely what is required of us, by the new knowledge of to-day. We are called upon to dislodge what is easily the most popular G.o.d in the calendar, albeit the littlest; that fat fluttering small boy, congenitally blind, with his haphazard archery playthings; that undignified conception, type of folly change and irresponsible mischief, which so amazingly usurps the name and place of love. Never was there a more absurd misrepresentation.

Suppose we wors.h.i.+pped Fire, the great sun for our over-lord, all lesser lights in varying majesty, each hearth-fire as the genius and guardian of the home. So wors.h.i.+pping, suppose we chose, as ever present image of the great idea, to be pictured and sculptured far and wide, to fill all literature, to be accepted even by science as type and symbol of the Fire Divine--a match-box!

So slight, so transient, so comparatively negligible in importance, is the flickering chance-sown spark typified in this pretty chimera of flying immaturity, compared with the majestic quenchless flame of life and love we ought to wors.h.i.+p.

We have taken the a.s.sistant for the princ.i.p.al, a tributary for the main stream; we have exalted Eros, the G.o.d of man's desire, and paid no heed to that great G.o.ddess of mother love to whom young Eros is but a running footman.

We are right to wors.h.i.+p love, in all its wide, diverging branches; the love that is grat.i.tude, love that is sympathy. love that is admiration, love that is gift and service; even the love that is but hunger--mere desire.

But when we talk of the Life Force, the strong stream of physical immortality, which has replaced form with form and kept the stream unbroken through the ages, we ought to understand whereof we speak.

That force is predominant. Under its ceaseless, upward pressure have all creatures risen from the first beginning. Resistlessly it pushes through the ages; stronger than pain or fear or anger, stronger than selfishness or pride, stronger than death. It rises like a mighty tree, branching and spreading through the changing seasons.

Death gnaws at it in vain. Death destroys the individual, not the race; death plucks the leaves, the tree lives on. That tree is motherhood.

The life process replaces one generation with another, each equal to, yes, if possible, superior to, the last. This mighty process has enlarged and improved throughout the ages, until it has grown from a mere division of the cell--its first step still--to the whole range of education by which the generations are replenished socially as well as physically. From that vague impulse which sets afloat a myriad oyster germs, to the long patience of a brooding bird; from the sun-warmed eggs of a reptile to the nursed and guarded young of the higher mammals; so runs the process and the power through lengthening years of love and service, lives by service, grows with service. The longer the period of infancy, the greater the improvement of species.

The fish or insect, rapidly matured, reaches an early limit. He must be competent to Iive as soon as he begins, and is no more competent at his early ending. The higher life form, less perfect at beginning, spending more time dependent on its mother, receives from her more power. First from her body's shelter, the full, long upbuilding; safety while she is safe; the circling guard of wise, mature, strong life, of conscious care, besides the unconscious bulwark of self-interest. Contrast this with the floating chances of the sp.a.w.n!

Then the rich, sure food of mother-milk, the absolute adaptation, the whole great living creature an alembic to gather from without, and distil to sweet perfection, what the child needs. Contrast this with the chances of new-born fish or fly, or even those of the bird baby, whose mother must search wide for the food she brings. The mammal has it with her.

Then comes the highest stage of all, where the psychic gain of the race is transmitted to the child as well as the physical. This last and n.o.blest step in the life process we call education. education is differentiated motherhood. It is social motherhood. It is the application to the replenishment and development of the race of the same great force of ever-growing life which made the mother's milk.

Here are the three governing laws of life: To Be; To Re-Be; To Be Better. The life force demands Existence. And we strain every nerve to keep ourselves alive. The life force demands Reproduction. And our physical machinery is s.h.i.+fted and rearranged repeatedly, with arrayed impulses to suit--to keep the race alive. Then, most imperative of all, the life force demands Improvement. And all creation groaneth and travaileth in this one vast endeavor. Not merely this thing--permanently; not merely more of this thing--continuously; but better things, ever better and better types, has been the demand of life upon us, and we have fulfilled it.

Under this last and highest law, as the main factor in securing to the race its due improvement, comes that supreme officer of the life process, the Mother. Her functions are complex, subtle, powerful, of measureless value.

Her first duty is to grow n.o.bly for her mighty purpose. Her next is to select, with inexorable high standard, the fit a.s.sistant for her work.