Transmission

Part 1

TRANSMISSION.

TRANSMISSION;

OR,

VARIATION OF CHARACTER

THROUGH

THE MOTHER.

BY GEORGIANA B. KIRBY

NEW EDITION,

REVISED AND ENLARGED.

NEW YORK: FOWLER & WELLS, PUBLISHERS, 753 BROADWAY. 1882.

COPYRIGHT, 1877, BY

S. R. WELLS & COMPANY.

INTRODUCTION.

In the following pages it is my wish to impress on women the grave truth, than which none can have more importance, that with them, with the mother, rests the greater power to mould for good or ill, for power or weakness, for beauty or deformity, the characters of her unborn children, and that with power comes the responsibility for its use.

Laying down a few self-evident propositions I shall illustrate the same by facts which have come under my own immediate notice during a period of nearly forty years, simply changing in each case the names of persons and locality.

The subject is by no means a new or original one. The principles involved are found scattered throughout all the journals which embody modern thought, and even find their way, accompanied by much contradiction, into our lighter literature. Yet it is certainly not universally understood that on the mother’s state of mind and body during pregnancy depend such vital interests. The shadow thrown on the subject by false modesty keeps the masses in ignorance and arrests the upward progress of the race.

The mother’s office was, and is yet, by the majority held to be a secondary one and comparatively unimportant. “She merely nourishes the germ given by the father” is the common supposition. What singular infatuation is this when anatomy shows that the ova or eggs exist in the mother, and that the material supplied by the father vivifies them!

In ancient, as well as modern, times it was admitted that during the period of gestation the mother was keenly sensitive to hideous impressions, and was through this equal to the production of deformity and monstrosity. It seems strange that the converse of this did not suggest itself, so that her sensibility could have been tested for the creation of beauty and symmetry.

It was also seen that the pregnant woman could affect the temper, the disposition of her child by yielding to angry emotions, but she was not credited with the ability to convey a serenity and sweetness of nature surpassing her own.

Through all the dark ages that have preceded us, woman has known herself a slave with less questioning as to the rightfulness of the position awarded her by man than she is sensible of to-day. This was the inevitable order of development for primitive man. That the unjust domination continues is but another proof of how unwillingly usurped power is relinquished.

The slave woman respects her master, not herself. The children she has borne have been the children of their father, not of their mother. Darwin declares that “qualities induced by circumstances inhere in that sex on which the circumstances operated,” passing by the opposite sex born of the same mothers. Thus women have given birth to independent sons and subservient daughters.

In civilized lands it is now almost universally admitted that conditions produce a race. The included truth that conditions, governed by invariable law, produce each individual of that race is scarcely recognized by the most enlightened, so deeply seated in the minds of men is the belief in woman’s inferiority and unimportance in the realm of causes.

“MY children will represent ME,” is the unexpressed thought of nearly every father until the baseless assumption is slowly dispelled by the irresponsible mediocre children before him. Men, and women too, are astonished and perplexed when the superficial, but pleasing young wife of the man of genius proves the mother of dull boys and girls without possibilities. Still more incomprehensible to them is the mysterious Providence which has awarded the vicious or deficient child to the excellent and sensible couple, and presented the lazy and disorderly one with a delicate saint, or an inventor. When the education, the training, had been exactly alike for all the children, why did the second or the sixth o’ertop the others in talent, high ambition, nobler presence? If the exceptional child were dull, the mother was held measurably responsible; if it were brilliant and beautiful, the qualities were traced back to some great-grandfather or grand-aunt of the father’s.

At length, if almost unwillingly, we have found the right track. In the early part of this century it began slowly to dawn on the minds of the most enlightened men that women were in a truer sense the mothers of the race than had been previously supposed, and through the influence of these pioneers in the world of ideas, woman begins to realize her great maternal power. With this knowledge, and the higher education now offered her in the schools, her character will broaden, her thoughts enlarge. Subserviency, personal gossip, and paltry rivalries will no more belong to her than to her brother. Courage and sincerity will belong to both, equally with purity and gentleness may we hope.

TRANSMISSION;

OR,

VARIATION OF CHARACTER THROUGH THE MOTHER.

All nature, including human nature, is governed by immutable law.

Part 2

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All variation of character, physical and mental, takes place in fœtal life.

To the sensitiveness conferred by nature on the child-bearing woman is due her superior capacity to improve or degrade the race. To her varied mental, emotional, and physical conditions during her periods of gestation are due the widely different characters of the children born of the same parents.

* * * * *

Every quality, or its absence, in man or woman is there, or is wanting, by reason of conditions afforded or withheld for its incarnation through the parents.

* * * * *

The compass and tone of each individual is absolutely decided before birth.

* * * * *

The faculties actively used by the mother during pregnancy, rather than those lying latent and part of her original character, will be found prominent in her offspring.

* * * * *

Other things being equal, the children of youthful, immature parents will be inferior to those of the fully developed.

* * * * *

A marriage may, in itself, be perfect in every respect, yet owing to violation of natural or spiritual law by the parents, the offspring may be inferior to either or both.

A marriage may be very imperfect, and the parties to it very imperfect characters, yet, through the influence of happily elevating conditions surrounding and, as it were, pressing in on the mother, the children will be superior to both parents.

Education may modify, but never overrule inherited defects.

CONCEPTION.

Very much depends on the moment of union which precedes conception. Never run the risk of conception when you are sick or over-tired or unhappy; or when your husband is sick, or recovering from sickness, exhausted, or depressed, or when you are not in full sympathy with him, or when the children already yours claim for their welfare your entire strength and time. For the bodily condition of the child, its vigor and magnetic qualities, are much affected by the conditions ruling this great moment. Independent of the mutual, spiritual estate, the material supplied by the father for the vitalizing of the ovum, represents his THEN state of being, and will continue to represent it in the life it has helped to organize. If, therefore, this communicated principle be wanting in vitality or diseased, physical perfection in the child is not to be expected. This finest secretion of the man’s whole being--this subtle essence of his nature, which is both spiritual and physical--should express his best possible condition. After this he can only affect the child indirectly through his influence on the mother’s mind.

The more highly-organized the mother, the more child-bearing exhausts her, because she is drained of her intellectual and spiritual forces. She, therefore, requires longer periods of rest and recuperation than the healthy, animal woman who can bear a child every two years for many succeeding years, and retain health and vigor.

Many of the most lovely, most charming, and altogether admirable women, become the inmates of insane asylums from having maternity thrust on them at too near periods of time.

For a child to be well born, his parents should be happily mated and in good health; the coming together should be mutual, and with a willingness, if not a desire, for parentage. Quite infrequent relations, if any, should take place up to the fourth month. This should, of course, be left entirely to the wife’s decision--to her feeling of what is right and best for her. I have known wives very desirous of having children, who, on finding themselves pregnant, could not help turning with glad affection to the father of the child. Nothing is as yet proved on this head, and there is no telling what magnetisms may or may not be furnished the embryo at this early stage. Nature in the woman refuses to entertain the thought of sexual commerce after the fourth month.

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