The case
is the same with the love of infants, because this originates in
conjugial love. It is well known that mothers are influenced by a most
tender love of infants, and fathers by a love less tender. That the love
of infants is inherent in conjugial love, into which women are born, is
evident from the amiable and endearing love of girls towards infants,
and towards their dolls, which they carry, dress, kiss, and press to
their bosoms: boys are not influenced by any such affection. It appears
as if mothers derived the love of infants from nourishing them in the
womb out of their own blood, and from the consequent appropriation of
their life, and thus from sympathetic union: but still this is not the
origin of that love; for if another infant, without the mother's
knowledge, were to be put after the birth in the place of the genuine
infant, the mother would love it with equal tenderness as if it were her
own: moreover infants are sometimes loved by their nurses more than by
their mothers. From these considerations it follows, that this love is
from no other source than from the conjugial love implanted in every
woman, to which is joined the love of conceiving; from the delight of
which the wife is prepared for reception.
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