Paternal love

“ Paternal love, on account of which the father is ready to do, to suffer, and to risk more for his child than for himself, and at the same time knows that he owes this, depends simply upon the fact that the begetter recognises himself in the begotten. ”

“ You can analyze paternal love, discover its causes, say 'I love my child because he is so and so, or so and so.' With the mother such analysis is impossible, she does not love her child because he is handsome or ugly, because he does or does not resemble her, has or has not her tastes. She loves him because she can not help it, it is a necessity. Maternal love is an innate sentiment in woman. Paternal love is, in man, the result of circumstances. ”

“ The serious side of the matter reveals one of the greatest differences between paternal and maternal love. A mother’s love is largely influenced by pity; hence she is very apt to lavish her fondest caresses on that child which happens to be imperfect in some way—say a cripple—and therefore unhappy. The father on the other hand, will show most favour to his handsomest daughter, his most talented son; and nothing will so swell a father’s heart and cause it to overflow with affection as the news of some great distinction acquired by this son. ”

“ In this way, no doubt, your paternal authority will lose something of its austere prestige, but will gain the deep and lasting influence that affection gives. Your baby will fear you less but will love you more. ”

“ And with this affection will grow, according to the immutable law, that the more man gives, the more he loves.
If matriarchy, in a new form, refined by the whole of development, should become the final phase—as in the opinion of many it has been the starting-point—of the family, then this would involve that paternal authority became conditional, depending on the value and warmth of the paternal feeling. At present many fathers are merely an accident in their children’s life, an accident which never even looks “like an idea.” ”

“ A love as tender as that of a lover for his mistress dwells, undoubtedly, in some paternal hearts toward a son. ”

“ If, therefore, you give way to this melancholy, how will you be able to perform your duty towards me, in cheerfully obeying my commands, and endeavouring, by your lively prattle and innocent gaiety of heart, to be my companion and delight? Nor will you be fit to converse with your brother, whom (as you lost your good papa when you were too young to know that loss) I have endeavoured to educate in such a manner, that I hope he will be a father to you, if you deserve his love and protection. ”

“ But on the other hand, the father, from his distance, supports, protects, nourishes his child, and it is ultimately on the remote but powerful father-love that the infant rests, in a rest which is beyond mother-love. ”

“ A father ‘grumbling’ at the birth of a child! ‘Always ready to welcome each new child as it came!’—and this said by a wife of her husband, as the strongest testimony to his manliness and justice as a husband and father, and as the highest reason why she should love and honor him! What man so base, so ignoble, so fallen, and so deserving a dungeon or the gallows, as he who imparts the germ of a new life to his wife, to gratify his passion, and then ‘grumbles’ because a child is born, and thrusts it from him? Man can give no greater proof of the utter degradation and ruin of his moral nature. ”

“ What deep and sacred emotions are excited in a father’s bosom, when he first becomes convinced that his love for his child is not a mere instinct, but worthily bestowed, and that others, less akin, participate his approbation! ”

“ You would be my son-in-law; you would be her husband in the eyes of the world. Bah! she has known no happiness, that excuses everything. Our Father in heaven is surely on the side of fathers on earth who love their children. ”

“ Sweetly does she commend her husband and father to each other's mutual care: her only request to that husband so purely and devotedly loved, and the only words in which she trusts herself to breathe aught of that affection- (yet what a volume of meaning lies therein!) —speak to the inmost soul—"Love my father, were it only for the great love I have borne to you." ”

“ Next to the priceless jewel of a mother's love, is the watchful care of a father's strong affection. And it seems to me that many boys and young men and older men, too, who have noble and loving fathers, so no always appreciate the love and care bestowed upon them by the parental hand. ”

“ The affection once seen only in every day attention, as he reaches home, breaks out in unrestrained vehemence. The warm embrace of the hitherto dignified father, the ecstatic pleasure beaming in the mother's eye, the proud welcome of the sister, and the wild enthusiasm even of the old black mammy, crowd on him the knowledge of their love and make him braver, and stronger, and nobler. ”

“ I feel certain that if you will follow its dictates you will soon be able to judge whether it was affection for you which caused your father to pierce your mother’s inmost soul by depriving her of the child she had nourished with her heart’s blood. Can you think of more refined cruelty than to rob a mother of the babe that has lain for months beneath her heart, and that, with the most excruciating pain and with great peril to her own life, has been born into the world? Do you think a father’s affection can excel, or even equal, the love of a mother? ”

“ I have no parents to love me, as other children have!" Thick tears coursed their rapid way over the rosy cheeks of the deserted foundling.
"Be still, and do not weep, my poor child! [151] You have a Father above,—one who is a Father to us all,—who loves you, and will take care of you." ”

“ He feels, as so many fathers do, the veil of shyness between parent and child, and recognizes how few are the opportunities, in the rough and tumble of life, for the fitly spoken word to confirm "what has been silently indrawn by contact of love." ”

“ Where is the father that does not long to shelter his child's sweet innocence forever within the pavilion of his heart's loving tenderness? And yet, where is the father who would be free from torture, were he assured that his soul's yearning would be satisfied, and that no high claim of unrelated love would ever rival or dispute his own? ”

“ Ownest wife, am I really a father?—the father of thy child! Sometimes the thought comes to me with such a mighty wonder that I cannot take it in. I love our little Una a great deal better than when I saw her last; and all the love that grows within me for her, is so much added to the infinite store of my love for thee. Ah, dost thou think of me?—dost thou yearn for me?—does thy breast heave and thy heart quake with love for thy husband?—... (portion of letter missing) I can hardly breathe for loving thee so much. ”

“ The first expansions of the human heart were the effects of a novel situation, which united husbands and wives, fathers and children, under one roof. The habit of living together soon gave rise to the finest feelings known to humanity, conjugal love and paternal affection. ”

“ The mother's heart is subject to a higher, holier law than that which separates her erring child from the fellowship of mankind; the father meets his returning son while yet afar off; and the sister—can she withhold her welcome?—can she neglect the study of all those little arts of love, by which a father's home may be rendered as alluring as the world? ”

“ Now, when the little child that was such a darling comfort to her sad, lonely life is so rudely wrested from that yearning heart, her thoughts irresistibly center about the father of her child. She had loved her baby best—the maternal love was more deeply developed in her than the conjugal—but even then her husband had been blessed with a fervent, tender worship that is the overflow of only such deep, strong natures as hers—natures prodigal of sweetness. ”

“ The paternal and filial duties discipline the Heart and prepare it for the love of all Mankind. The intensity of private attachments encourages, not prevents, universal Benevolence. ”

“ Have I not told you that you can love your husband as much as you please? Is it not a father's duty to direct the affections of his child as I wish to do, and is it not the child's first obligation to submit to its father's will and guidance? ”

“ I remember once to have read in some French author that the attachment we feel to home, the sacred names of son and brother, are not more than the instincts of habit; that natural affection, as it is called, has no real existence; and that it is the mere force of repetition that forms the tie by which we love those whom we call father or mother. ”

“ Do not be misled, I beg of you, for you once descended from your proud station to make love to me, and I have treasured that love and it has grown into such a mountain that no chasm of indifference can ever engulf it, and remember you are his father—my child’s father. He would love you, too, for having loved me, if for no other reason, for, God bless him, he is in love with your old sweetheart. Where I go he will go. I do not love you still with the hope that as in our case at first, love begets love. ”

“ My father is no stage-tyrant. If he is not open to reason, what man living is? And no man has a tenderer heart. He was all kindness and forbearance and understanding when I did a thing which might well have made him angry. Some day you shall see the letter he wrote me, when I had run away to Paris. In it, he spoke, as never to me before, of his own marriage—of his love for my mother. ”

“ What the lover is to youth the parents are to childhood—the object of worship and affection, the idol of the heart. It has always seemed to me that a parent is protector and lover blended in one. Towards both we are drawn by the same desire, to make the beloved a part of ourselves, to have complete possession. The disappointment is the same in each case when love is not reciprocated, and we feel an equal readiness to embrace pain and adversity in order to promote the happiness of the beloved. ”

“ Your goodness in adopting him and in giving him a home has been, under God’s guiding, the means of bringing them together—the main link in the chain of circumstances that has led to this goal. You have been a father to him in his hour of extremest need. My wife will never be willing to requite such goodness by robbing you of what sunshine the child’s love can bring. ”

“ The father naturally loves his child, but the child niust develop his love for the father from the fear of what the father can do, through awe, dread, dependence, and reverence, to the appreciative and affectionate regard of love. ”

“ It is a shocking confession to make: my heart remained unmoved when I thought of the father whom I had lost.
Our mothers have the most sacred of all claims on our gratitude and our love. They have nourished us with their blood; they have risked their lives in bringing us into the world; they have preserved and guided our helpless infancy with divine patience and love. What claim equally strong and equally tender does the other parent establish on his offspring? ”

“ He would anticipate that his mother and father, with such a heredity and education, would be high-minded above dissipation and triflings, sensible beyond unhygienic habits in food and in dress, well-poised and superior to pettiness and discords, with a radiant love that maintained an atmosphere of joyousness, graciousness, courage. Having chosen each other because they loved each other, his father and mother would live and work and plan because they loved him. ”

“ My father reflected for a time in silence and then, placing his hand on my shoulder, said in a trembling voice, ‘Do you think that you alone know how to love, that your father does not love you, and that he will not feel the separation from you? ”

“ Many children never see any endearments between their parents, partly because when the children are old enough consciously to notice these, they have ceased to take place. The marriage of the parents has run down. They are no longer lovers but [87] purely egoistic-social business partners in the home.
But where should a tradition arise, and how be perpetuated, of a noble type of marital love, except in and by the children’s home? How should they learn anything or where should they best learn of married happiness except from their father and mother? ”

“ In well-formed minds this love grows up with their growth and strengthens with their strength. The idea of parentage awakens love in the heart. The relation is so near [Pg 190] and dear it can not be otherwise in good and cultured minds. Then we can love a father whom we have not seen. ”

“ But, you see, fathers are different from sons—they look forward, which we don’t; and besides, I quite well remember mine saying to me once that he considered it rather a misfortune than otherwise for a man to be in love with the girl he was going to marry. ”

“ The day after he wrote her a letter, of which I shall speak presently.
A few minutes after the nobleman had gone the mother sent for me to come to her, and after paying an eloquent tribute to my virtues, my generosity, and my unceasing kindness towards her family, she made the following proposal:
“As I feel sure that you have all the love of a father for my daughters, I wish you to become their father in reality! I offer you my hand and heart; become my husband, you will be their father, their lord and mine. ”

“ And even this night will I make supplication to the Father that he strengthen each of you for that which you must now so soon pass through. I love you all with the love wherewith the Father loves me, and therefore should you henceforth love one another, even as I have loved you. ”

“ To-day the ideal of the Heaven-father fastens itself as easily to the child's affection for grandpa as on his dependence upon his father. To-day the ideal of mother-love, never lessened even by wrong-doing of the child, is as securely fibred upon the picture of grandma, ever ready to heal and comfort, as upon that of the mother, whose daily ministrations make the child comfortable. ”