rods of fresh poplar [or storax tree] and of the almond and of the plane
tree, and peeled white streaks in them, and made the white appear which
was in the rods. And he set the rods which he had peeled over against
the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs where the flocks came
to drink; and they conceived when they came to drink. And the flocks
conceived before the rods, and the flocks brought forth ringstreaked,
speckled and spotted. And Jacob separated the lambs, and set the faces
of the flocks toward the ringstreaked and all the black in the flock of
Laban; and he put his own droves apart, and put them not unto Laban's
flock. And it came to pass, whensoever the stronger of the flock did
conceive, that Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the flock in the
gutters, that they might conceive among the rods; but when the flock
were feeble, he put them not in: so the feebler were Laban's, and the
stronger Jacob's."
Whether or not this incident actually occurred as stated we do not know.
According to the subsequent part of the narrative, the effect of setting
up the peeled rods was ascribed to God's interference in his behalf; but
it is not improbable that we have in the story a reference to ancient
shepherd lore, based on the superstitious notions still so common in the
East. In the earlier part of the same chapter is a story relating to
mandrakes, which were supposed to have influence on human generation.
Jacob is said to have used three kinds of rods, those of the poplar or
storax tree, the almond, and the plane tree, which produced
ringstreaked, speckled and spotted lambs.
The influence exerted by Jacob's rods was of a different character from
that which is supposed to give rise to the marking of offspring before
birth, which is not uncommon if we are to accept as true all the cases
mentioned in books referring to the subject. What occurred took place
_before_ conception, and not subsequent to it, as in these cases.
Nevertheless, both classes of phenomena are recognized by so competent
an authority as M. Th. Ribot, who, in his "Heredity,"[57:A] when
criticising Dr. Lucas' explanation of the origin of the numerous
exceptions to the law of heredity, as being due to the operation of the
law of spontaneity, affirms that there is no law of spontaneity, but
that all such exceptions may be explained by reference to certain causes
of diversity. M. Ribot gives three causes of diversity, which are:
1--Antagonistic heredities of two parents; 2--Accidental causes in
action at the moment of generation; 3--External and internal influences
subsequent to conception. He assigns but little importance to causes
acting after birth, such as diet, climate, circumstances, education,
physical and moral influences, because, though they may produce serious
effects, these are not radical. Possibly, however, since the advance
made in the education of those who are born with defects of the sensory
apparatus, M. Ribot would somewhat modify his opinion on that point. As
to the causes which operate at the period of conception, or subsequent
thereto and before birth, he says, in relation to the latter class, they
"are all the physical and moral disturbances of uterine existence--all
those influences which can act through the mother upon the fetus during
the period of gestation; impressions, emotions, defective nutrition,
effects of imagination." He adds: "These causes are very real, despite
the objections of Lucas, who attacks them in order to establish his law
of spontaneity. We see from examples that between considerable causes
and their effects there exists an amazing disproportion."
The causes of diversity which operate at the instant of conception
depend, says Ribot, "less upon the physical and moral natures of the
parents than on the particular state in which they are at the moment of
procreation." This fact is referred to by M. de Quatrefages as fully
proving the universality of the law of heredity, and M. Ribot adds, "It
enables us to understand that those transitory states which exist at the
moment of conception may exert a decisive influence on the nature of the
being procreated, so that often, where now we see only spontaneity, a
more perfect knowledge of the causes at work would show us heredity."
Professor E. D. Cope, the well-known author of "The Origin of the
Fittest," would seem to doubt the truth of the stories of birthmarks on
the ground that "the effect of temporary impressions on the mother is
not strong enough to counterbalance the molecular structure established
by impressions oftener repeated throughout much longer periods of
time."[59:A] And yet there is no doubt that birthmarks do occasionally
occur, although it is very difficult to obtain properly authenticated
cases of them.
AN ILLUSTRATIVE CASE.--How great is the influence on unborn offspring
of the mother's mental condition, as well as the effect over them of
pleasant surroundings, is shown by the following case. A young girl
attracted attention by her beauty and by the superiority of the type she
exhibited over that of either of her parents, and on her mother being
spoken to on the subject she remarked:
"In my early married life my husband and I learned how to live in holy
relations, after God's ordinance. My husband lovingly consented to let
me live apart from him during the time I carried this little daughter
under my heart, and also while I was nursing her. Those were the
happiest days of my life. Every day before my child was born, I could
have hugged myself with delight at the prospect of becoming a mother. My
husband and I were never so tenderly, so harmoniously, or so happily
related to each other, and I never loved him more deeply than during
those blessed months. I was surrounded by all beautiful things, and one
picture of a lovely face was especially in my thought. My daughter looks
more like that picture than she does like either of us. From the time
she was born she was like an exquisite rosebud--the flower of pure,
sanctified, happy love. She never cried at night, was never fretful or
nervous, but was all smiles and winning baby ways, filling our hearts
and home with perpetual gladness. To this day, and she is now fourteen
years old, I have never had the slightest difficulty in bringing her up.
She turns naturally to the right, and I never knew her to be cross or
impatient or hard to manage. She has given me only comfort; and I
realize from an experience of just the opposite nature that the reason
of all this is because my little girl had her birthright."
The future experience of this lady was, however, of a very different
nature. She added:
"A few years later I was again about to become a mother, but with what
different feelings! My husband had become contaminated with the popular
idea that even more and frequent relations were permissible during
pregnancy. I was powerless against this wicked sophistry, and was
obliged to yield to his constant desires. But how I suffered and cried;
how wretched I was; how nervous and almost despairing! Worst of all, I
felt my love and trusting faith turning to dread and repulsion.
"My little boy, on whom my husband set high hopes, was born after nine
of the most unhappy, distressing months of my life, a sickly, nervous,
fretting child--myself in miniature, and after five years of life that
was predestined by all the circumstances to be just what it was, after
giving us only anxiety and care, he died, leaving us sadder and wiser.
"I have demonstrated to my own abundant satisfaction that there is but
one right, God-given way to beget and rear children, and I know that I
am only one of many who can corroborate this testimony."
The following case of prenatal culture appeared in _The Philosophical_
for October 5, 1895, above the signature of "John Allyn," who says:
"About forty years ago I was a neighbor of a young couple who had been
recently married. They were of fair natural abilities, but not highly
educated. The wife could play on the piano well and accompany it with
her voice. The husband was a house-building contractor. Before their
first child was born the wife was provided with instruments for drawing,
and interested herself in their use and mathematical calculations
connected with them. The child proved to be a boy, who took to
architectural drawing as by instinct. With very little effort he became
proficient, and is now employed at a high salary by the Southern Pacific
Railroad as their architect.
"Some years later, before the second child was born, the mother
interested herself with music with reference to the effect it would have
on the unborn child. This child proved to be a girl, who is now an
expert singer, finding ready employment in opera companies. Though not a
star, she has a superior talent for music which enabled her to take
advantages of musical training easily."
BELIEFS OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLES.--Whenever such cases happen, it is under
the influence of some very strong emotion, during the period of
gestation, arising from the action on the nervous system of the mother
by an external object presented to the sight, the organ of which would
seem to have an intimate association with the general muscular system.
There is nothing to show that primitive peoples recognized the action of
prenatal influence through the senses; but there is a very curious
custom, which is so widespread at the present time that we may well
suppose it to have been formerly almost universal, dependent upon the
imagined effect of the eating of animal flesh. All primitive peoples
believe that a man acquires physical or mental characteristics from
animals of whose flesh he partakes. Cannibalism is closely connected
with this notion, as the man who eats part of the body of a foe is
thought to become endowed with the victim's courage, strength or other
special quality. Probably the Mosaic regulations as to unclean animals,
that is, animals unfit for food, was based on such an idea; and
certainly the command to abstain from eating blood was thus connected;
as we are told the blood is the life, and if so, then it must be the
carrier of vital influences.
The custom above referred to, which is known to ethnologists as _la
couvade_, or "hatching," supposes injurious action on the organism of
the child of food eaten by its parents, as appears from the facts
brought together by Dr. E. B. Tylor in his "Researches into the Early
History of Mankind." The couvade usually has reference to the period
immediately following the birth of a child; but among the native tribes
of South America, where it is more extensively prevalent than elsewhere,
it is observed while the child is still unborn. Thus, in Brazil,
according to Von Martius, "A strict regimen is preserved before the
birth; the man and the woman refrain for a time from the flesh of
certain animals, and live chiefly on fish and fruits." The peculiarity
of the couvade custom, and that which gives it its special interest, is
the fact that it usually concerns the father and not the mother, as
injury to the child is supposed to be due to the conduct of the former
rather than of the latter. Thus, among the Land Dyaks of Borneo, "The
husband, before the birth of his child, may do no work with a sharp
instrument, except what is necessary for the farm; nor may he fire guns,
nor strike animals, nor do any violent work, lest bad influences should
affect the child; and after it is born the father is kept in seclusion
indoors for several days, and dieted on rice and salt, to prevent not
his own but his child's stomach from swelling."
Here food abstinence takes place after the birth of the child, but,
according to Brett, in Guinea "Some of the Acawois and Caribi nations,
when they have reason to expect an increase of their families consider
themselves bound to abstain from certain kinds of meat, lest the
expected child should, in some mysterious way, be injured by the
partaking of it. The acouri (or agouti) is thus tabooed, lest, like that
little animal, the child should be meager; the haimara, also, lest it
should be blind--the outer coating of the eye of the fish suggesting
film or cataract; the labba, lest the infant's mouth should protrude
like the labba's, or lest it be spotted like the labba, which spots
would ultimately become sores."
Another related case, of more recent observation, is that of the
Motumotu of New Guinea, who say that after conception the _mother_ must
not eat sweet potato or taro, lest the head of the child grow out of
proportion, and the _father_ must not eat crocodile or several kinds of
fish, lest the child's legs grow out of proportion. At Suan, a husband
shuts himself up for some days after the birth of his first child, and
will eat nothing.[65:A]
Various explanations of the custom of couvade have been offered, and
probably C. Staniland Wake is right when he states that it is connected
with the idea that the father is the real source of the child's
life.[66:A] As he points out, on the authority of M. Girard-Teulon,
among the European Basques, even at the present day, a husband enters
his wife's abode only "for the purpose of reproduction, and to work for
the benefit of his wife." Mr. Wake remarks that, "With some of the
Brazilian tribes, when a man becomes a father he goes to bed instead of
his wife, and all the women of the village come to console him for the
pain and suffering he has had in making this child." This agrees with
the idea entertained by so many peoples that the child is derived from
the father only, the mother being merely its nourisher. When such an
idea is held, it is not surprising if, as among the Abipones, the belief
is formed that "the father's carelessness influences the new-born
offspring, from a natural bond and sympathy of both," or if the father
abstains, either before or after the child's birth, from eating any
food, or performing any actions which are thought capable of doing it
harm. Still more so, if the child is regarded, as is sometimes the case,
as the reincarnation of the father, a notion which is supported by the
fact, pointed out by Mr. Gerald Massey, that in the couvade the parent
identifies himself with the infant child, into which he has been
typically transformed.
That conclusion agrees with the opinion expressed by Mr. Tylor, that
the couvade "implicitly denies that physical separation of 'individuals'
which a civilized man would probably set down as a first principle
common by nature to all mankind. . . . It shows us a number of distinct
and distant tribes deliberately holding the opinion that the connection
between father and child is not only, as we think, a mere relation of
parentage, affection, duty, but that their very bodies are joined by a
physical bond, so that what is done to the one acts directly upon the
other."[67:A] The couvade custom is thus closely connected with the
question of the special relationship of a child to one or other of its
parents. Curious notions on this subject have been formed from time to
time; but the ancients almost universally entertained the idea held by
the Greeks that "the father, as endowed with creative power, was clothed
with the divine character, but not the mother, who was only the bearer
and nourisher of the child." Professor Hearn accepts this view in his
work, "The Aryan Household," and suggests as the Aryan thought on the
subject: "A male was the first founder of the house. His descendants
have 'the nature of the same blood' as he. They, in common, possess the
same mysterious principle of life. The life spark, so to speak, has
been once kindled, and its identity, in all its transmissions, must be
preserved. But the father is the life-giver. He alone transmits the life
spark, which from his father he received. The daughter receives, indeed,
the principle of life, but she cannot transmit it."
M. Ribot, who, as we have seen, endorses the popular belief as to the
possibility of the fetus being affected, during uterine existence,
through the organism of the mother, reduces all the obscure causes of
deviation from heredity to two classes. Of these, the first is the
disproportion of effects to causes, already mentioned; and the second is
the transformation of heredity. As to the first of these causes, he lays
it down as a general truth that "the more complicated the mechanism, the
greater the disproportion between accidental causes and their effects."
He supports this conclusion by reference to Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's
researches on the production of monsters, and he affirms that the
disproportion between cause and effect cannot be foreseen by measuring,
but is known only by experience, as "psychological laws are analogous
now to mechanical and now to chemical laws," so that it is impossible to
proceed by deduction from causes to effects. (Page 207.)
BIRTHMARKS RARE.--And yet the very fact that cases of birthmarks are
comparatively rare, proves the greatly preponderating influence of
heredity over the constitution of the offspring, modified by the
disposition of the parents at the time of procreation. Professor Cope
has some explanatory remarks on that subject which deserve quotation. He
says--after referring to the hypothesis that growth-force may be,
through the motive force of the animal, directed to any locality,
whether the commencement of an executive organ has begun or not--that "A
difficulty in the way of this hypothesis is the frequently unyielding
character of the structure of adult animals, and the difficulty of
bringing sufficient pressure to bear on them without destroying life.
But, in fact, the modifications must, in most instances, take place
during the period of growth. It is well known that the mental
characteristics of the father are transmitted through the spermatozoid,
and that, therefore, the molecular movements which produce the mechanism
of such mental characters must exist in the spermatozoid. But the
material of the spermatozoid is combined with that of the ovum, and the
embryo is compounded of the animal contents of both bodies. In a
wonderful way the embryo develops into a being which resembles one or
both parents in minute details. This result is evidently determined by
the molecular and dynamic character of the original reproductive cells
which necessarily communicate their properties to the embryo which is
produced by their subdivisions." Professor Cope goes on to say, "Richard
Hering has identified this property of the original cells with the
faculty of memory. This is a brilliant thought, and, under restriction,
probably correct. The sensations of persons who have suffered amputation
show that their sensorium maintained a picture or map of the body so far
as regards the location of all its sensitive regions. This simulcrum is
invested with consciousness whenever the proper stimulus is applied, and
the character of the stimulus is fixed by it. This picture probably
resides in many of the cells, both sensory and motor, and it probably
does so in the few cells of simple and low forms of life. The
spermatozoid is such a cell, and, how or why we know not, also contains
such an arrangement of its contents, and contains and communicates such
a type of force. It is probable that in the brain-cell this is the
condition of memory of locality. If, now, an intense and long-continued
pressure of stimulus produces an unconscious picture of some organ of
the body in the mind, there is reason to suppose that the energies
communicated to the embryo by the spermatozoid and ovum will partake of
the memory thus created. The only reason why the oft-repeated stories of
birthmarks are so often untrue, is because the effect of temporary
impressions on the mother is not strong enough to counterbalance the
molecular structure established by impressions often repeated
throughout much larger periods of time."[71:A]
WHY CHILDREN RESEMBLE PARENTS.--That children reproduce the general and
physical and mental characteristics of their parents in combination is
unquestionable truth, although the particular mode in which they are
communicated is yet undetermined, notwithstanding the fact mentioned by
Professor Cope that they are somehow conveyed by the microscopic sperm
and germ in the union of which the new being has its beginning. Thus
every individual must possess the general characteristics of the
primitive human family from which through a vast number of ancestors he
has descended. And yet at every stage of descent the organism may have
obtained fresh characters, or at least have undergone some modification.
As remarked by Dr. G. H. Th. Eimer, "Every character which must have
been formed through the activity of the organism is an acquired
character. All characters, therefore, which have been developed by
exertion are acquired, and these characters are inherited from
generation to generation. The same holds for all organs atrophied
through disease--the degree of atrophy is acquired and inherited. In the
first class we see especially the action of direct adaptation; in the
second, the results of the cessation of the action. A third class of
acquired characters is to be traced simply to the immediate action of
the environment on the organism, and, originally, at the commencement of
their appearance, all characters must have belonged to this
class."[72:A] We have here a general argument in opposition to the
theory propounded by Professor Weismann, that acquired characters are
not transmissible. Elsewhere (page 382) Dr. Eimer observes: "Phyletic
growth, or the evolution of the organic world ever into higher and more
complex forms, or at least into forms of different structure, is, as I
have said, merely the sum of the processes of growth of the
ancestors--together with the result of external influences on the forms
during their development and their existence. This additional
modification which the individuals as such undergo is--together with the
influence of crossing--the very cause of the constantly progressing
evolution. All that the members of a series of individuals directly
connected by descent acquire constitutes together the material for the
formation of a new species."
LIFE'S EXPERIENCES AFFECTING CHILD.--Unless characteristics acquired by
an individual, that is, the modifications of the organism due to his
own life experiences, are capable of being handed down to his offspring,
it is difficult to see how any progress could be made in the development
of the race. Weismann's declaration that acquired characters are not
transmissible was a surprise to the scientific world when first made,
but it has been accepted by many Darwinians. His conclusion is dependent
on his doctrine of heredity, which differs from that propounded by
Darwin, but is by no means new; as its leading ideas, as pointed out by
Professor G. J. Romanes,[73:A] are largely a reproduction of those of
Mr. Francis Galton, whose work on heredity attracted much attention when
first published. The views of Darwin, Galton and Weismann on that
subject have been compared by Professor Romanes, who explains the
distinction between them. He says (page 133), after referring to the
supposed continuity of the germ-plasm, common to the theories of Galton
and Weismann, but not required by that of Darwin, "The three theories
may be ranked thus--The particulate elements of heredity all proceed
centripetally from somatic-cells to germ-cells (gemmules): the
inheritance of acquired characters is therefore habitual.
"These particulate elements proceed for the most part, though not
exclusively, from germ-cells to somatic-cells (stirp): the inheritance
of acquired characters is therefore but occasional.
"The elements in question proceed exclusively in the centrifugal
direction last mentioned (germ-plasm): the inheritance of acquired
characters is therefore impossible."