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.

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

SLEEPING.

There are many reasons which make it most unadvisable for husband and wife to occupy the same bed, and growing physiological knowledge will sooner or later effect a change in this, as in many other of our habits. In the first place, it is not desirable in this way to equalize the magnetism of the two parties. Part of the mutual attraction is thus lost. Then sleep is not so wholly undisturbed and refreshing as when one is quite alone. But most important of all, the mere fact of contact often arouses the animal when the will and judgment are asleep, and a base union takes place, which is followed by regret, shame, and bodily weakness.

A late writer on marriage, parentage, and kindred subjects takes the ground that the sexual attraction exists solely for the production of offspring. He gives the impression that, unless the minds of the parties concerned are filled with the desire for parentage, the physical union is wholly sensual and unjustifiable. Here the experience of the very best men and women who should certainly give us a standard, if one is possible, goes contrary to this view, and certainly we ought not to discard this testimony for that of the unspiritual animal world, especially when this varies from the human in being polygamous, and each season choosing another mate; neither can it be supposed that the animal of intuition creates offspring.

Then again, unless denied children, a man never has a thought of parentage in that all-absorbing moment. It is his wife--the woman he adores, to whom he is drawn as by an invisible magnet, and children originating in this tender and impassioned embrace will be thus far magnetic and well-born children. A desire for parentage is as good as the love of woman, no doubt; but since it is in the order of nature for a man to be concerned for the woman alone, should we interfere?

With regard to the best hour in the twenty-four for originating a new life, I differ from most authors. Love is most private and interior, shunning vulgar observation and the glaring light, therefore the quiet hours of early morning best befit the expression of it.

Not many hundred years will elapse before the earth will be sufficiently populated. Then large families of children will be a curse instead of a blessing, and parents will be obliged to limit their powers of reproduction to two children only. Will they then reduce the exercise of the amative faculty to two occasions? We have yet much to discover on this head.

AMATIVENESS.

Since in the minds of many good and otherwise intelligent women much confusion exists respecting the actual marriage or “sexual union,” it is desirable that we make some remarks on that organ of the brain on which rests conjugal love--namely, Amativeness.