The history of civilization is the story of the mother, a story that stales not with repetition. Richter, in his Levana, makes eloquent appeal:

"Never, never has one forgotten his pure, right-educating mother! On the blue mountains of our dim childhood, towards which we ever turn and look, stand the mothers who marked out for us from thence our life; the most blessed age must be forgotten ere we can forget the warmest heart. You wish, O woman, to be ardently loved, and forever, even till death.

mothers of your children."

Be, then, the

Tennyson in The Foresters uses these beautiful words: "Every man for the sake of the great blessed Mother in heaven, and for the love of his own little mother on earth, should handle all womankind gently, and hold them in all honour." Herein lies the whole philosophy of life. The ancient Germans were right, who, as Tacitus tells us, saw in woman sanctum aliquid et providum, as indeed the Modern German Weib (cognate with our wife) also declares, the original signification of the word being "the animated, the inspirited."

CHAPTER IV.

THE CHILD'S TRIBUTE TO THE FATHER.

If the paternal cottage still shuts us in, its roof still screens us; and with a father, we have as yet a prophet, priest, and king, and an obedience that makes us free. Carlyle.

To you your father should be as a god. —Shakespeare.

Our Father, who art in Heaven. - Jesus.

Father of all! in every age,

In every clime adored,

By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord.-Pope.

Names of the Father.

Father, like mother, is a very old word, and goes back, with the cognate terms in Italic, Hellenic, Teutonic, Celtic, Slavonic, and Indo-Aryan speech, to the primitive Indo-European language, and, like mother, it is of uncertain etymology.

An English preacher of the twelfth century sought to derive the word from the Anglo-Saxon fédan, "to feed," making the "father" to be the "feeder" or "nourisher," and some more modern attempts at explanation are hardly better. This etymology, however incorrect, as it certainly is, in English, does find analogies in the tongues of primitive peoples. In the language of the Klamath Indians, of Oregon, the word for "father" is t'shishap (in the Modoc dialect, p'tishap), meaning "feeder, nourisher," from a radical tshi, which signifies "to give somebody liquid food (as milk, water)." Whether there is any real connection between our word pap,- with its cognates in other languages, - which signifies "food for infants," as well as "teat, breast," and the child-word papa, "father," is doubtful, and the same may be said of the attempt to find a relation between teat,

tit, etc., and the widespread child-words for "father," tat, dad. Wedgewood (Introd. to Dictionary), however, maintained that: "Words formed of the simplest articulations, ma and pa, are used to designate the objects in which the infant takes the earliest interest, the mother, the father, the mother's breast, the act of taking or sucking food." Tylor also points out how, in the language of children of to-day, we may find a key to the origin of a mass of words for "father, mother, grandmother, aunt, child, breast, toy, doll," etc. From the limited supply of material at the disposal of the early speakers of a language, we can readily understand how the same sound had to serve for the connotation of different ideas; this is why 66 mama means in one tongue mother, in another father, in a third, uncle; dada in one language father, in a second nurse, in another breast; tata in one language father, in another son," etc. The primitive Indo-European p-tr, Skeat takes to be formed, with the agent-suffix tr, from the radical på, "to protect, to guard," the father having been originally looked upon as the "protector," or "guarder." Max Müller, who offers the same derivation, remarks: "The father, as begetter, was called in Sanskrit ganitár, as protector and supporter of his posterity, however, pitár. For this reason, in the Veda both names together are used in order to give the complete idea of 'father.' In like manner, måtar, 'mother,' is joined with ganit, 'genetrix,' and this shows that the word måtar must have soon lost its etymological signification and come to be a term of respect and caress. With the oldest Indo-Europeans, måtar meant 'maker,' from ma, to form.'""

Kluge, however, seems to reject the interpretation "protector, defender," and to see in the word a derivative from the "naturesound" pa. So also Westermarck (166. 86-94). In Gothic, presumably the oldest of the Teutonic dialects, the most common word for "father" is atta, still seen in the name of the far-famed leader of the Huns, Attila, i.e. "little father," and in the ätti of modern Swiss dialects. To the same root attach themselves Sanskrit atta, "mother, elder sister"; Ossetic ädda, "little father (Väterchen)"; Greek arra, Latin atta, "father"; Old Slavonic oti-ci, "little father"; Old Irish aite, "foster-father." Atta belongs to the category of "nature-words" or "nursery-words" of which our dad (daddy) is also a member.

Another member is the widespread papa, pa. Our word papa, Skeat thinks, is borrowed, through the French, from Latin papa, found as a Roman cognomen. This goes back in all probability to ancient Greek, for, in the Odyssey (vi. 57), Nausicaa addresses her father as πάππα φίλε, “ dear papa.” The Papa of German is also borrowed from French, and, according to Kluge, did not secure a firm place in the language until comparatively late in the eighteenth century.

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In some of the Semitic languages the word for "father" signifies "maker," and the same thing occurs elsewhere among primitive people (166. 91).

As with "mother," so with "father"; in many languages a man (or a boy) does not employ the same term as a woman (or a girl). In the Haida, Okanāk ēn, and Kootenay, all Indian languages of British Columbia, the words used by males and by females are, respectively: kuñ, qāt; lɛē'u, mistm; títō, sō.

In many languages the word for "father," as is also the case with "mother," is different when the parent is addressed from that used when he is spoken of or referred to. In the Tsimshian, Kwakiutl, Nootka, Ntlakyapamuq, four Indian languages of British Columbia, the words for " father," when addressed, are respectively a'bō, āts, nō'wē, pup, and for "father" in other cases, nEgua'at, au'mp, nuwē'k'sō, sk'ä'tsa. Here, again, it will be noticed that the words used in address seem shorter and more primitive in character.

In the Chinantec language of Mexico, ñuh signifies at the same time "father" and "man." In Gothic aba means both "father" and "husband" (492. 33). Here belongs also perhaps the familiar "father" with which the New England housewife was wont to address her husband.

With many peoples the name "father" is applied to others. than the male parent of the child. The following remarks of McLennan, regarding the Tamil and Telugu of India, will stand for not a few other primitive tribes: "All the brothers of a father are usually called fathers, but, in strictness, those who are older than the father are called great fathers, and those who are younger, little fathers. With the Puharies, all the brothers of a father are equally fathers to his children." In Hawaii, the term "male parent" "applied equally to the father, to the uncles, and even

to distant relations." In Japan, the paternal uncle is called "little father" and the maternal uncle "second little father" (100. 389, 391).

A lengthy discussion of these terms, with a wealth of illustration from many primitive languages, will be found in Westermarck (166. 86-94).

Father-Right.

Of the Roman family it has been said: "It was a community comprising men and things. The members were maintained by adoption as well as by consanguinity. The father was before all things the chief, the general administrator. He was called father even when he had no son; paternity was a question of law, not one of persons. The heir is no more than the continuing line of the deceased person; he was heir in spite of himself for the honour of the defunct, for the lares, the hearth, the manes, and the hereditary sepulchre" (100. 423). In ancient Rome the paterfamilias and the patria potestas are seen in their extreme types. Letourneau remarks further: "Absolute master, both of things and of people, the paterfamilias had the right to kill his wife and to sell his sons. Priest and king in turn, it was he who represented the family in their domestic worship; and when, after his death, he was laid by the side of his ancestors in the common tomb, he was deified, and helped to swell the number of the household gods" (100. 433).

Post thus defines the system of "father-right":

"In the system of 'father-right' the child is related only to the father and to the persons connected with him through the male line, but not with his mother and the persons connected with him through the female line. The narrowest group organized according to father-right consists of the father and his children. The mother, for the most part, appears in the condition of a slave to the husband. To the patriarchal family in the wider sense belong the children of the sons of the father, but not the children of his daughters; the brothers and sisters of the same father, but not those merely related to the same mother; the children of the brother of the same father, but not the children of the sisters of the same father, etc. With every wife the relationship ceases every time" (127. I. 24).