393. (6) This atmosphere affects the feminine sex primarily, thus mothers, and the masculine sex or fathers from them. This stems from the same cause as discussed previously,* that the atmosphere of conjugial love is received by women and communicated through women to men, for the reason that women are born forms of love for the understanding of men, and the understanding is its recipient. It is the same with a love of little children, because this originates from conjugial love. People know that mothers have a very tender love for little children, and fathers a less tender one. Evidence that a love of little children is engraved on the conjugial love into which women come by birth is apparent from the loving and friendly affection of girls for little children, and for the dolls which they carry, dress, kiss and clasp to their bosoms. Boys do not have the same affection. [2] It appears as though mothers acquire a love of little children from their having nourished them in the womb with their own blood, and from the children's consequent assimilation of their life, and so from a sympathetic union between them. But this is nevertheless not the origin of that love, since, if, without the mother's knowing, another child were substituted after the birth in place of the true one, she would love it with equal tenderness as if it were her own. Moreover, little children are sometimes loved more by their nurses than by their mothers. From these considerations it follows that this love derives from no other source than the conjugial love implanted in every woman, to which has been adjoined a love of conceiving, the delight of which causes a wife to be prepared for reception. This is the first beginning of that love, which after the birth passes with its delight in fullness to the child. * See no. 223 above.