Part 16

The ignorant bring forth the most young. The rich place the child in the inexperienced hands of an ignorant nurse. Nurses for new born babes should be thoroughly schooled, and be the highest paid of all employés, for they can make or damn the future of the child, inasmuch as the first response to its environment are, and should be, under the guidance of the nurse. Give me a child until it is eight years of age, and I will promise much for its future.

The wife carries into her new home the same environment that her mother was possessed of, because she had no means of learning other. Mother’s sanitation, mother’s style of cooking, mother’s mode of abusing her neighbors, of having two manners in the family—one for company, all are hers and in the new home. If that environment resulted in certain moral traits in her brothers and sisters, why will not this environment repeated produce the same result in her children? It will, and the inheritance is not in the blood, but in the environment. This you may rest assured of, that where the father dictates the environment of the home, or his mother comes and does so, the inheritance will be entirely on the side of the father, and vice versa. But, if you wish to be rid of the inheritance, send for the old lady who has reared a family of children lacking in all the disagreeable attributes which are creeping into your family. Allow her to have full sway in the household, and see how quickly the heredity will disappear, and how uncomfortable you will all be for the time being. She will turn the house topsy-turvy, thereby forcing laws of sanitation which you declared you could never endure; she will change the entire regimen of the table, cause you to eat food that you affirmed you could never eat, and will throw out the food which you were certain you could not exist without. In fact, everything that you avoided she will bring into the house, and those things to which you were most partial, will be immediately eliminated.

Let us build a story. Let us follow a young man from the country through a generation and see the effects.

John Smith is a farmer, and, being like most farmers, dislikes manual labor, not so much as his father, who is a very hard-working man, and desires that John will not have to work as he has. So he sends John to a business college and gives him a thorough (?) course in business (?). And now John becomes imbued with the thought that he should not soil his hands, that he must go to the city and be a “real fellow.” John’s mother—good woman—has told John that he should not steal, that he should go to church, has taught him his prayers; hence, John is a good boy, having been surrounded with a healthy environment. He goes to the city and takes a job of keeping books in a store.

Probably, in a week or ten days, the well-meaning minister comes around and invites John to attend services, which he does, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred, John sits in a back pew, awfully lonely, thinking of mother and, perhaps, paying but little attention to the sermon.

The trouble lies here: The stores close early, and John, not working hard now, and being full of energy which he cannot give vent to in his present occupation, does not respond to sleep until ten or eleven o’clock at night, and does not know what to do during the hours between the closing of the store and the time that sleep gathers around him. Some of the other clerks invite him to play pool and billiards, which games of themselves are perfectly harmless; but as a rule, the only place that you can find the appliances for the game is connected with a bar room. John, being ruled as all men, animals and plants are, by suggestion, goes, watches the game, and, in time, learns to play it. The saloon is warm, no one interferes with him, he has money, his companions drink, John drinks soda-water. In a little while his stomach rebels at the “soft stuff,” his curiosity is aroused and he takes a drink.

We will assume that John is a reader; he is anxious for knowledge and is willing to read. He is a member of the Y. M. C. A., but those good people, so afraid that the secretary will fail to get sleep enough, insist on his closing their establishment at nine or nine-thirty, and poor John, having an hour and a half on his hands knows where he can go to find warmth, good-fellowship, and perhaps congeniality; although he does not drink while there. On Sundays, when time hangs heavily, the good Y. M. C. A. people, so afraid of the soul of their secretary, close the place and turn their fellowmen adrift, feeling that it is much better to save the soul of one secretary than those of a thousand of their fellowmen, forgetting that the good that one secretary can do would make a great big mark in favor of both himself and the Y. M. C. A. with the Supreme Ruler (?).

But the devil and his followers are wise. They know how to cater to man, and at the times when all other places are closed, the side door of the saloon is always open, and in there is warmth, and reading matter, and enjoyment, and poison.

I remember my experience in New York City. I had no love for liquor, was wildly desirous of reading, found that the Y. M. C. A. on Twenty-third street was a very congenial place. My time was my own; I slept late mornings and, consequently, remained up late nights. Every night, at nine-thirty or ten o’clock, the bell rang and I was sent into the street. As it was cold, and damp, and uncomfortable, I was naturally forced to go where there was warmth, and in the saloons I found all comforts for physical man, and the only thing expected of me was that I spend a reasonable amount at the bar, so that the landlord could pay rent, pay for the gas, pay his employés and buy diamonds. Many is the drink, many the glass of beer I drank, not because I desired it, but to make a return for the environment furnished me. If the Y. M. C. A.’s would only learn, taking lesson from the saloon-keepers, to run their association rooms in opposition, by offering all physical comforts with the mental food, and keeping their establishments open at the time all others are closed, allowing the wanderers—those without homes—a refuge, they would accomplish more good in one year than they are accomplishing now in one hundred, with their strict adherence to antediluvian rules.

Idleness is the workshop of the devil. When a time of idleness is, give the people something to do, but the first thing they must have is a place—“first place your subject, then give him his attributes.” If you would make converts, if you would lead man into the pathway of goodness, give him a place (environment). But if a man is accustomed to a homely place, a “swell” place of meeting is always a suggestion against you, forcing him to feel uncomfortable. Give him an environment which will be his ideal and at the same time not above him. After you have caught your bird by giving him a place, you may cause him to do many things, but it is impossible to catch him without a proper “cage.”

John is thus forced to visit the saloons, and he drinks whisky. Now, whisky is one of “nature’s” gifts. If our temperance advocates would only force the lawmakers at Washington to enact a pure food law compelling all saloon people to sell pure liquor, our insane asylums and penitentiaries would be plenty large enough to supply the demand. The adulteration of food, and lack of knowledge to prepare it, is doing more to fill our insane asylums and penitentiaries than all the “bugs” in Christendom. The taking into our stomachs of impure liquors and adulterated foods produces irritations that result in insanity and crime.

John takes into his stomach an irritant called whisky. In the course of time he takes enough of it to produce a reaction, and some morning wakes up lacking an appetite. He goes to the store. One of his fellow clerks says, “Old man, what is the matter? You look broke-up.”

“Yes, I am; I couldn’t eat any breakfast.”

The fellow clerk, meaning well, asks, “Why not take a cocktail?” and John now takes a cocktail, a combination of two poisons, the whisky plus the bitters, which, being an irritant, stimulates the secretions, and the nerve-ends begin reaching forth for food upon which to do their natural work. In a little while John gets into such a condition that he cannot do without his cocktail.

About this time, John, being frugal and of gentlemanly demeanor, meets a fool girl, who marries him. Any woman who marries a man who drinks intoxicants is a fool, and I say it unreservedly. John and Mary get married and start a home of their own in a small town where they can be closer to “nature” than in the large cities, which are entirely artificial.

Mary, having a clever mother, has learned to cook and knows how to do her own housework; but, strange to say, for some reason, her cooking does not suit John. Why, Mary often wonders and talks with her mother. After some six months, when Mary and John have become thoroughly acquainted, he informs Mary that she does not know how to cook; that every time he eats one of her meals he is subject to a fit of indigestion, which is true. Mary learned to cook for people with “normal” digestions, but John, having an “abnormal” digestive apparatus, so induced by the liquor, cannot digest the plain food of his wife’s cooking. He prefers to eat in a night restaurant, which caters only to the drinking element, and, obeying the law that “like cures like,” or similia similibus curantur, the food is highly seasoned, and on the table are all kinds of condiments; or, in other words, John, to digest his food, must partake of such food as is full of counter-irritants.

Mary, being a dutiful wife, and grieving because John cannot digest meals prepared by her, has a long consultation with her mother. For the sake of novelty, we will assume that this mother-in-law, differing from the others, is a good, rational, sensible woman, who informs Mary that the best thing she can do is to visit this night-lunch establishment and discover, if possible, why it is that the food cooked there is more digestible than hers. Mary does so, and the first thing she finds, ninety-five times out of a hundred, is that the place is what she calls filthy, and wonders how food prepared in such a kitchen is digestible. Assuming that the proprietor of this night-lunch is a man who means well, he imparts to Mary the information that he is very liberal with all kinds of spices in the seasoning of his food; that on his table are nothing but the hottest of pepper sauces; that his biggest expense is for condiments, and that all of his customers use them freely. So Mary goes home, has a long “think,” goes to her grocer and says, “Send me every condiment in the place that is hot.” He does so and Mary prepares on a certain Sunday—which is generally the feast day—a dinner full of spices, places the bottles of condiments on the table, and begs John to dine at home once more. John does so, uses freely of the condiments, smacks his lips, and for the first time in several months kisses his wife, saying, “Mary, you have hit the scheme.”

Mary, like a good and loving wife, continues to fill John’s food full of “hot stuff,” and the “hot stuff,” being a counter-irritant, stimulates the secretions and digests John’s food, keeping him in good humor, and Mary believes she has entered her Elysium. At first Mary cannot partake of the food she cooks for John; but, as constant association will reconcile one to anything, in time she learns to partake of this food, with the result that she becomes an invalid. The irritations produce an abnormal condition that may be noticed in many ways, ill-temper, nervousness, a desire for something which is not gratified until some fool doctor first administers a drug to her. The moment she has learned of the counter action she becomes a drug fiend. If this fool doctor fails to be the family physician, she is saved from that, yet is nervous, irritable and sickly.

A child is now born into the family. The father, being full of counter-irritants, digests his dinners in good humor; the mother, being full of irritants, is in bad humor, and baby is attracted to the caresses and expressions of good-will on the father’s face. Father takes a spoonful of soup so hot with condiments that it would make a salamander wince, and gives baby a taste; this continues until in a short time baby is sickly, and a demand is made for a doctor, whom they expect, with drugs far more vicious than the condiments, to re-establish a healthy condition in baby that has been destroyed through the use of food prepared for a drunkard father, instead of for a child just learning to digest and assimilate food.

Time goes on; the sickly wife, the undeveloped child—perhaps more children—all drain on the purse, keeping the doctor in wealth and affluence. No! because the poor doctor rarely gets bills paid in full; but, at any rate, the drain is such that John, seeing nothing but bills payable in front of him, drinks the harder.

The first child which, perhaps, is a boy, at the age of fifteen, being irritated and desiring something that he cannot explain or gratify, takes a drink of liquor, and behold, a change takes place. The counter-irritant soothes and quiets that hitherto unsatisfied longing. Having once acquired the knowledge through the proper sense, that a drink of liquor will produce a quieting effect, it is not long before the boy becomes a drunkard, and the good kind neighbors and the all-wise (?) scientists claim that he inherited it from father. No! He inherited the environment of a drunkard father, which was certain to produce by reaction the cause that made his father’s present environment.

A daughter born into the family, acquiring the surroundings and attributes of a drunkard father, marries and carries into her home the same environment. Why, then, will not her family respond in the same way? Or, if the husband’s desires are gratified, why will not that environment, which the father carries from his home, produce on his children the same result as it produced on him. Therefore, our heredity is one of environment.

I have spoken of the external environment, environment proper, of the body. As our body is our closest environment, the state in which our body is, is the state of our mind, i. e., our actions.

In looking over the paper this evening I see that some great (?) French scientist has made a record of a large number of criminal children, and traces back (?) and lays the entire fault—the cause of their criminality—to inherited alcoholism, their fathers and forefathers were drunkards. It is strange, if that were the case, that the children did not refuse the breast and make a demand for gin. A milk punch would have been refused by them. The child is satisfied with the breast until it is placed in the same physical condition as explained in the story of John and Mary. The philosophy of latent tendencies, of the desire for the unknown, laying dormant in the cerebrum for years and all at once asserting themselves, is rot.

Study environment; learn the Law of Suggestion, the suggestions that force results; learn cause; learn how to respond properly to cause, and effect will take care of itself. All is good, all is consistent, results are always in accordance with the suggestions; therefore, nothing is “abnormal.” Study the suggestions (cause), and you will find that the result is good, correct, as to the positive forced either for or against.

Sex is entirely the result of the mental condition of the mother. Breeders of animals seem to show that it is during the latter part of the menstrual period, when, through the physical irritations, a desire for the male is dominant in the mind of the female, that she conceives a male offspring. A couple of years ago a great (?) French scientist claimed it was the food that decided the sex of a child. That was simply suggestion, a prospective mother eating a special food trying to bring forth a male; the constant suggestion was what did it, not the food. You will find, as a rule, the exceptions easily explained, but not here, that the “nervous, irritated” women have families of boys, while the lymphatic and phlegmatic women have families of girls.

A thought constantly in the “mind” is either from a rational external suggestion or a mind suggestion. The idiosyncrasies shown in a child as birthmarks, monstrosities, are from instantaneous, severe stimulus, causing the cerebral impression to dominate and disarrange the proper mind action.

Degeneracy I will define to mean other than the general acceptance of “normal.”