Part 3

No other single organ of the brain has so commanding an influence on the whole nature as this much-slandered faculty. The very word itself is held attaint. Yet it is this power, in woman as well as man, that gives beauty and symmetry to form and feature, grace and sweetness to manners and voice, and sympathy and charity to the soul. All the heroism that has redeemed the past from utter and disgusting barbarism, has sprung out of the love of man for woman; not the Friendship, but the Love, whose completest expression--that which most softened and refined the man, strengthened and sustained the woman--was the perfect union of soul and body demanded by itself. And spite of its gross and cruel record, amativeness is to-day, as it always has been, the principal guarantee for the higher development of humanity. Without it genius is impossible, capacity for large enjoyments, attractiveness, a segment of the circle is wanting, making all the rest incomplete and defective.

Because of the hitherto undue activity of this organ and its apparent fickleness, many philosophers have given friendship a higher place than love in the economy of human life. But let us extinguish this passion in the heart, leaving friendship to its widest experience, and we should soon sink down to the level of the Chinese, whose brutal contempt for woman expressed in every fable and proverb, and illustrated in the national countenance, precludes to them all advancement.

Man appears to have been superendowed with amativeness since first he stood erect. Inferior intellect and strong passions characterized the primitive man. And as the head of the modern man still awaits the arch, he continues to be intemperate on this side of his nature, and to dominate woman in such degree as suits his pleasure. Over-indulgence is followed by a sense of shame, of disgust; and as this habit of excess was and is universal, man has learned to separate this passion from what he calls his higher nature, and brand it as degrading, sensual, shameful. The helpless, the willing subjection of woman in marriage has served to lower yet more the character of the relation.

The Church has taught that marriage is a sensual estate, including one major-general and one private. A profound contempt for nature is inherited with the blood, and is confirmed in us by experience.

Now, science and philosophy prove that sin, evil, wickedness, mean merely a want of balance among faculties in themselves good. How weak is a man without sufficient firmness, yet how unamenable is he who possesses too large a share. How valuable is acquisitiveness with conscience and the reasoning powers fully developed. Without the latter, acquisitiveness purloins cash and jewelry.

Excess of amativeness--the faculty most blindly abused hitherto--has worked most cruel wrong. Goaded by stimulants it has murdered its willing slave, sought satisfaction in promiscuous relations which destroy conjugal love, changing it to lust,--levied tax on the other organs of the brain, dragging them with itself to a shameful death.

The difference between Love and Lust is the difference between heaven and hell. Love seeks only the happiness of the being loved, and is as refined in its most private as in its public demeanor. Lust cares only for selfish, animal gratification, without regard to the slave who gives enforced consent.

That an act absolutely necessary to the continuance of the race, animal, human, and vegetable, and the principle of which governs even the mineral world, should be in itself, and under right conditions, considered coarse, is but evidence of our own ignorance. We reason a priori that when the entire being consents, the spiritual as well as the affectional, the act of union is as pure in its character as the blossoming of the lily or the rose. The pure, unselfish love of a noble man, when carried to its ultimate with a happily responsive wife, should be as free from shame as the opening violet. Emotion is as divine as thought. Could it be necessary, or even possible, for a merely sensual act to originate a being like Margaret Fuller, or Hawthorne, or the author of Shakespeare’s plays? He who replies in the affirmative is unbalanced and unnatural.

To common observation the more reverent and kindly demeanor of the lad as he approaches puberty demonstrates the refining, ameliorating nature of conjugal love.

The radiant countenance of the modest wife, the harmonious faces of the chaste and loving pair, justify their lives.

Marriage is a partnership for the higher development of each party, and the continuance of the race.

Under the past régime the highly organized and more individualized American woman has had her capacity for conjugal emotion almost annihilated. And this constantly repeats itself in her children as the abused mother transmits to her son the abnormal passions of his father, and to her daughter her own feeble, outraged conjugal capacity.

This state of things will continue as long as women grow up ignorant of the laws of their own being; as long as mothers bring up their sons and daughters in absolute ignorance of what is right and wrong in marriage--the mother thinking she is modest and refined when she blushes before the honest facts of nature.

What father instructs his son before marriage as to his behavior under that most sacred bond? What mother advises with her daughter, assuring her that she is to be the judge and regulator in her private life with her husband? Too often the health of both is impaired, and the mutual attraction destroyed, because knowledge came too late. Instead of this, the young wife should be proud to say, “My mother taught me that this relation should take place very seldom. We shall be less happy if we are intemperate.” The man who married her because he loved and admired her, would willingly be guided by her to a true continence. As it is, she evades the responsibility, and abandons soul and body to the undisciplined will of one as ignorant of law as herself. Here, as elsewhere, men, and women too, persuade themselves that subserviency in woman is lovely as in a man it is contemptible.

DESIRES AND FANCIES.

A superstition is common among the ignorant that every whim, every craving of the pregnant woman should be gratified, or the child will be “marked.” I once heard of a woman who, shortly before her confinement, insisted on having a pint of whisky, and because it was thought best to give her only half a pint, the child was never satisfied and drank himself to death.

It is true that the very great change in the system, the forces now specially drawn to the womb which before were equally distributed throughout the body, leaves the stomach often in a very delicate condition, needing more acid or less, more flesh and less vegetable diet, or the reverse, as the case may be, and there should certainly be no pains spared in providing the mother with the food that she can relish and digest, or in her yielding to her innocent and harmless fancies. The first months are often wearisome and depressing. She feels restless and unsettled, and should be treated with patient sympathy even if she seems a little unreasonable.

But the patient should never resign her own judgment and conscience. Gross feeding, excess of meats, gravies, pastry, wine, etc., should be avoided if desired. Over-eating is nearly as bad as over-drinking, and a sense of repletion after meals should be a warning that the intemperance must not be repeated. It is very plain that if the pregnant woman used her will in denying herself that which she knew to be unwholesome, or in excess of sufficient, the child would be more likely to inherit self-control. The true mother will have constant reference to the well-being of the child she is bearing, and she will have ample reward.

BIRTH-MARKS.

Birth-marks, whether unimportant in character, or amounting to deformity, are to be referred not so much to the first impression made on the mother’s mind, as to her subsequent and frequent reproduction of the image. The unfurnished mind of the illiterate woman seizes on and retains the ugly or grotesque picture, which another rich in thought and experience would have dismissed at once. Thus we see club-feet, strabismus, and other physical defects almost confined to the lower orders of the people.

Be this as it may, the mother should turn away on principle from the unpleasant object or circumstance, and occupy herself by an exercise of her will with something agreeable. If she acts thus, all will be safe.

DEFICIENT CHILDREN.

The union of young persons, affectionate, but unintellectual and ignorant of law, is followed, not unfrequently, by more or less deficiency in the first child. No restraint is put on the passions, as it is believed that after the legal ceremony has taken place any amount of indulgence is permissible.

More cases of deficiency are found in the families of the rich, and of the brutalized and ignorant poor, than in households whose moderate circumstances necessarily force some domestic duties on the wife. The simplest household labors involve the exercise of calculation, perception, order and judgment, not to mention the good to the body of the exercise of many sets of muscles. Consider, then, the loss to the unborn where wealth has secured abundant service and the pregnant condition is made an excuse for indolence and over-indulgence!

If the young couple have planned their life wisely; if they are hospitably inclined, it may be musical and social at once, and the wife especially take some kindly interest in the welfare of those less favored than themselves, all will be safe so far as the intellect is concerned; and if the delicate consideration and courtesy felt and shown before marriage by each to the other continue after the union is consummated, a happy temperament, a pleasing natural manner may be expected for the child.

But if these conditions do not exist, the first child will be greatly inferior to those that follow it, since the most indolent and selfish mother will expend some thought on her own little one after its arrival.

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Habits of intoxication in either parent result in offspring who prove to be non compos mentis, if not drivelling idiots. No wife should cohabit with an inebriate. The greatest sin that can be committed is to create a child who must of necessity be a degraded or helpless creature. Even if he escape these worst consequences, he will be of quite inferior organization to those born of temperance.