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.

* * * * *

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.

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.

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.

* * * * *

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.

It would be well if the unmarried would visit asylums where idiots and inebriates bear testimony to their ante-natal conditions.

OVER-EXERTION.

Over-exertion during pregnancy is almost as hurtful as indolence, depriving the unborn of those vital forces necessary to a well-constituted existence.

In no country called civilized does the pregnant woman overtax her strength as she does in these United States. This fact is quite sufficient to account for the very general want of robustness, vigor, and firm health, especially among our women. I refer here principally to our farmers’ and mechanics’ wives.

The farmer’s brood mare is carefully considered. She is exercised gently lest her progeny suffer deterioration. But the farmer’s wife, the mother of _his_ progeny, who are to do him honor by their virtues, or cast reproach upon him by their mediocrity or vices, is over-worked every day of each of the nine months of each period that is to decide his case.