Another striking aspect of the mother’s relation to the preservation of the race reveals itself in the matter of food. She cannot bear to see food wasted, however little may be left over; whilst the prostitute wilfully squanders the quantities of food and drink she demands. The mother is stingy and mean; the prostitute open-handed and lavish. The mother’s object in life is to preserve the race, and her delight is to see her children eat and to encourage their appetites. And so she becomes the good housekeeper. Ceres was a good mother, a fact expressed in her Greek name, Demeter. The mother takes care of the body, but does not trouble about the mind.[15] The relation between mother and child remains material from the kissing and hugging of childhood to the protective care of maturity. All her devotion is for the success and prosperity of her child in material things.
[15] Compare the conversation in Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt,” Act ii., between the father of Solveig and Aase (perhaps the best-drawn mother in all literature) when they were discussing the search for their son:
Maternal love, then, cannot be truly represented as resting on moral grounds. Let any one ask himself if he does not believe that his mother’s love would not be just as great for him if he were a totally different person. The individuality of the child has no part in the maternal love; the mere fact of its being her own child is sufficient, and so the love cannot be regarded as moral. In the love of a man for a woman, or between persons of the same sex, there is always some reference to the personal qualities of the individual; a mother’s love extends itself indifferently to anything that she has borne. It destroys the moral conception if we realise that the love of a mother for her child remains the same whether the child becomes a saint or a sinner, a king or a beggar, an angel or a fiend. Precisely the same conclusion will be reached from reflecting how children think that they have a claim on their mother’s love simply because she is their mother. Maternal love is non-moral because it has no relation to the individuality of the being on which it is bestowed, and there can be an ethical relation only between two individualities. The relation of mother and child is always a kind of physical reflex. If the little one suddenly screams or cries when the mother is in the next room, she will at once rush to it as if she herself had been hurt; and, as the children grow up, every wish or trouble of theirs is directly assumed and shared by the mother as if they were her own. There is an unbreakable link between the mother and child, physical, like the cord that united the two before childbirth. This is the real nature of the maternal relation; and, for my part, I protest against the fashion in which it is praised, its very indiscriminate character being made a merit. I believe myself that many great artists have recognised this, but have chosen to be silent about it. The extraordinary over-praising of Raphael is losing ground, and the singers of maternal love are no higher than Fischart or Richepin.
