Part 30 (1/2)

7. WHEN JUSTIFIABLE.--There may be occasions where jealousy is justifiable.

If a woman's confidence has been shaken in her husband, or a husband's confidence has been shaken in his wife by certain signs or conduct, which have no other meaning but that of infidelity, then there is just cause for jealousy. There must, however, be certain proof as evidence of the wife's or husband's immoral conduct. Imaginations or any foolish absurdities should have no consideration whatever, and let everyone have confidence until his or her faith has been shaken by the revelation of absolute facts.

8. CAUTION AND ADVICE.--No couple should allow their a.s.sociations to develop into an engagement and marriage if either one has any inclination to jealousy. It shows invariably a want of sufficient confidence, and that want of confidence, instead of being diminished after marriage, is liable to increase, until by the aid of the imagination and wrong interpretation the home is made a h.e.l.l and divorce a necessity. Let it be remembered, there can be no true love without perfect and absolute confidence. Jealousy is always the sign of weakness or madness. Avoid a jealous disposition, for it is an open acknowledgment of a lack of faith.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

{222}

The Improvement of Offspring.

Why Bring Into the World Idiots, Fools, Criminals and Lunatics?

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Mother's Good Night Prayer.]

1. THE RIGHT WAY.--When mankind will properly love and marry and then rightly generate, carry, nurse and educate their children, will they in deed and in truth carry out {223} the holy and happy purpose of their Creator. See those miserable and depraved scape-goats of humanity, the demented simpletons, the half-crazy, unbalanced mult.i.tudes which infest our earth, and fill our prisons with criminals and our poor-houses with paupers. Oh! the boundless capabilities and perfections of our G.o.d-like nature and, alas! its deformities! All is the result of the ignorance or indifference of parents. As long as children are the accidents of l.u.s.t instead of the premeditated objects of love, so long will the offspring deteriorate and the world be cursed with deformities, monstrosities, unhumanities and cranks.

2. EACH AFTER ITS KIND.--”Like parents like children.” ”In their own image beget” they them. In what other can they? ”How can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit?” How can animal propensities in parents generate other than depraved children, or moral purity beget beings other than as holy by nature as those at whose hands they received existence and const.i.tution?

3. AS ARE THE PARENTS, physically, mentally and morally when they stamp their own image and likeness upon progeny, so will be the const.i.tution of that progeny.

4. ”JUST AS THE TWIG IS BENT THE TREE'S INCLINED.”--Yet the bramble cannot be bent to bear delicious peaches, nor the sycamore to bear grain.

Education is something, but _parentage_ is _everything_; because it ”_dyes in the wool_,” and thereby exerts an influence on character almost infinitely more powerful than all other conditions put together.

5. HEALTHY AND BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN.--Thoughtless mortal! Before you allow the first goings forth of love, learn what the parental conditions in you mean, and you will confer a great boon upon the prospective bone of your bone, and flesh of your fles.h.!.+ If it is in your power to be the parent of beautiful, healthy, moral and talented children instead of diseased and depraved, is it not your imperious duty then, to impart to them that physical power, moral perfection, and intellectual capability, which shall enn.o.ble their lives and make them good people and good citizens?

6. PAUSE AND TREMBLE.--Prospective parents! Will you trifle with the dearest interests of your children? Will you in matters thus momentous, head-long rush

”Where angels dare not tread?”

Seeking only mere animal indulgence?--Well might cherubim shrink from a.s.suming responsibilities thus momentous! Yet, how many parents tread this holy ground completely unprepared, and almost as thoughtlessly and ignorantly as brutes--entailing even loathsome diseases and {224} sensual propensities upon the fruit of their own bodies. Whereas they are bound, by obligations the most imperious, to bestow on them a good physical organization, along with a pure, moral, and strong intellectual const.i.tution, or else not to become parents! Especially since it is easier to generate human angels than devils incarnate.

7. HEREDITARY DESCENT.--This great law of things, ”Hereditary Descent,”

fully proves and ill.u.s.trates in any required number and variety of cases, showing that progeny inherits the const.i.tutional natures and characters, mental and physical, of parents, including pre-dispositions to consumption, insanity, all sorts of disease, etc., as well as longevity, strength, stature, looks, disposition, talents,--all that is const.i.tutional. From what other source do or can they come? Indeed, who can doubt a truth as palpable as that children inherit some, and if some, therefore all, the physical and mental nature and const.i.tution of parents, thus becoming almost their fac-similes?

8. ILl.u.s.tRATIONS.--A whaleman was severely hurt by a harpooned and desperate whale turning upon the small boat, and, by his monstrous jaws, smas.h.i.+ng it to pieces, one of which, striking him in his right side, crippled him for life. When sufficiently recovered, he married, according to previous engagement, and his daughter, born in due time, and closely resembling him in looks, const.i.tution and character, has a weak and sore place corresponding in location with that of the injury of her father.

Tubercles have been found in the lungs of infants at birth, born of consumptive parents,--a proof, clear and demonstrative, that children inherit the several states of parental physiology existing at the time they received their physiological const.i.tution. The same is true of the transmission of those diseases consequent on the violation of the law of chast.i.ty, and the same conclusion established thereby.

9. PARENT'S PARTIc.i.p.aTION.--Each parent furnis.h.i.+ng an indispensable portion of the materials of life, and somehow or other, contributes parentally to the formation of the const.i.tutional character of their joint product, appears far more reasonable, than to ascribe, as many do, the whole to either, some to paternity, others to maternity. Still this decision go which way it may, does not affect the great fact that children inherit both the physiology and the mentality existing in parents at the time they received being and const.i.tution.

10. ILLEGITIMATES OR b.a.s.t.a.r.dS also furnish strong proof of the correctness of this our leading doctrine. They are generally lively, sprightly, witty, frolicsome, knowing, {225} quick of perception, apt to learn, full of pa.s.sion, quick-tempered, impulsive throughout, hasty, indiscreet, given to excesses, yet abound in good feeling, and are well calculated to enjoy life, though in general sadly deficient in some essential moral elements.

11. CHARACTER OF ILLEGITIMATES.--Wherein, then, consists this difference?

First, in ”novelty lending an enchantment” rarely experienced in sated wedlock, as well as in power of pa.s.sion sufficient to break through all restraint, external and internal; and hence their high wrought organization. They are usually wary and on the alert, and their parents drank ”stolen waters.” They are commonly wanting in moral balance, or else delinquent in some important moral aspect; nor would they have ever been born unless this had been the case, for the time being at least, with their parents. Behold in these, and many other respects easily cited, how striking the coincidence between their characters on the one hand, and, on the other, those parental conditions necessarily attendant on their origin.

12. CHILDREN'S CONDITION depends upon parents' condition at the time of the s.e.xual embrace. Let parents recall, as nearly as may be their circ.u.mstances and states of body and mind at this period, and place them by the side of the physical and mental const.i.tutions of their children, and then say whether this law is not a great practical truth, and if so, its importance is as the happiness and misery it is capable of affecting! The application of this mighty engine of good or evil to mankind, to the promotion of human advancement, is the great question which should profoundly interest all parents.