Mr. Spencer is doubtless right in asserting that of all family
affections filial love is the least developed; and in tracing this
weakness especially to the parental harshness and disposition to inspire
excessive fear just referred to. In Germany the example of the Prussian
king who so unmercifully treated his children was extensively imitated.
The condition in France is indicated by the words of Chateaubriand: “My
mother, my sister, and myself, transformed into statues by my father’s
presence, only recover ourselves after he leaves the room;” and in
England, in the fifteenth century, says Wright, “Young ladies, even of
great families, were brought up not only strictly, but even
tyrannically.” And even two centuries later “children stood or knelt in
trembling silence in the presence of their fathers and mothers, and
might not sit without permission.”
Among animals filial affection can scarcely be said to exist, except as
a very utilitarian craving for protection and sustenance. Among
primitive men it is a common practice to abandon aged parents to their
fate. The parents do not resent this treatment; and of the Nascopies
Heriot even says that the aged father “usually employed as his
executioner the son who is most dear to him.” Nor are cases of heartless
neglect at all uncommon even among modern civilised communities. But the
gradual change of fathers “from masters into friends” has tended to
multiply and intensify filial love at the same rate as paternal; and the
advance of moral refinement will tend to make the lot of aged parents
more and more pleasant, not only because the duty of gratitude for
favours received will be more vividly realised and enforced by example,
but because the cultivation of the imagination intensifies sympathy,
thus making it impossible for a son or daughter to be happy while they
know their parents to be unhappy.
Our feelings are curiously complicated and subtly interwoven. Parents
feel a natural pride in their children. The best way therefore to repay
them for all their troubles is to act in such a way as to justify and
intensify that pride. On the other hand, the thought that the parental
pride is gratified also gratifies filial vanity, and proves an
additional incentive to ambitious effort.