Conceived in Beauty
... Here in close recess
With flowers, garlands and sweet smelling herbs,
Espousèd Eve deck’d first her nuptial bed,
And heav’nly choirs the Hymenæan sung,
What day the genial angel to our sire
Brought her in naked beauty more adorn’d,
More lovely than Pandora, whom the Gods
Endow’d with all their gifts....
... Into their inmost bower
Handed they went; and, eased the putting off
Those troublesome disguises which we wear,
Straight side by side were laid; nor turn’d, I ween,
Adam from his fair spouse; nor Eve the rites
Mysterious of connubial love refused:
* * * * *
These, lull’d by nightingales, embracing slept,
And on their naked limbs the flowery roof
Shower’d roses, which the morn repaired. Sleep on,
Blest pair, and O! yet happiest if ye seek
No happier state, and know to know no more.
MILTON: _Paradise Lost_.
In ancient Sanskrit, there is a work dealing minutely with love and
with the different forms its expression takes in different types of
people. This has been modified, added to and re-written by many later
authors, and under various names works based on this are to be found in
Sanskrit and translated into various Indian dialects.
In these volumes much that is curious, and to Western nations, absurd,
is to be found, but also several profound observations which appear
to be based on truths generally ignored by us. One of the interesting
themes of these very early writers is a recognition and a description
of the characteristics of the best and most perfect type of woman, the
“Padmini.” In addition to describing fully her physical appearance and
characteristics, it is observed that she being a child of light and
not of darkness, prefers the supreme act of love to take place in the
daylight rather than the dark.
In this country, owing to our artificial, over-burdened and
over-strained lives, the physical union of lovers is almost always
confined to the night time. Crowded as we are in cities and suburban
districts, solitude in Nature is almost impossible; for most, seclusion
is only known in a closed room after dark. The Sanskrit writer of the
sixth century, however, takes love more seriously than we do, and he
describes how for the sacred union serious preparation of beauty should
be made--a room or natural arbour decked with flowers; and for the
supreme expression of love (that is the love between a pair each of
the highest and most perfect type), this should take place in the light
of day and not the darkness of the night. Even in our present degraded
civilization there are some who do realize the sacredness and the value
of the bodily embrace in the fresh beauty of nature and sunlight. There
must be many beautiful children who were conceived from unions which
took place under natural conditions of light and open air radiance. The
most spontaneous time for conception is the summer when our air is mild
and sweet enough for true love in Nature’s way.
In an empire where woodland or seaside solitude is not obtainable by
lovers for this their most sacred function, the distribution of the
population is gravely wrong. It will, however, probably for some time
to come be difficult for those who desire such a profound return to
natural rectitude, to obtain the necessary security of seclusion amid
beautiful surroundings. Therefore, alas, it will in all probability
long remain only possible to most lovers to ramble together in nature,
and then later to follow the usual course of uniting within their room.
We do not know enough about ourselves or the results of our actions,
under our present conditions, to realize to what extent the hour of
conception modifies the quality of the offspring. We only know that
the child of lovers beautiful in mind and body, the child ardently
desired by them, whose coming is prepared with every beauty which it is
in their power to obtain, is often well worth all the outlay of love
and thought. Certainly among those personally known to me who have
followed the rather exceptional course I indicate, the children are
remarkable for both physical beauty and exquisite vitality, balanced
with sweetness and strength of mental and spiritual qualities.
There is an old and in my opinion valuable view (although it has not
been “scientifically proved”) that the actual hour of conception, the
condition of the parents at the moment when the germs fuse is one of
vital consequences to the child-to-be. Scientific proof of this will
be, of course, extraordinarily difficult to discover, but indirectly
there do appear to be some actual data in favour of the converse,
namely that temporary unhealthy states of the parents result in the
conception of children so inferior as to be markedly and seriously
anti-social. Forel (_Sexual Question_, 1908) says:--
The recent researches of Bezzola seem to prove that the old belief
in the bad quality of children conceived during drunkenness is
not without foundation. Relying on the Swiss census of 1900,
in which there figure nine thousand idiots ... this author has
proved that there are two acute annual maximum periods for the
conception of idiots (calculated from nine months before birth)
the periods of carnival and vintage, when the people drink most.
In the wine-growing districts, the maximum conception of idiots at
the time of vintage is enormous, while it is almost _nil_ at other
periods.
It is, of course, not always possible to arrange the hour of the union
which will lead to conception. And further even when the hour of the
union is arranged, nature, to some extent, controls and may modify
conditions before conception. Sometimes the fertilization of the egg
cell by the sperm cell takes place in the hour of the bodily union of
the lovers, sometimes this inner process is delayed by hours or days
(see overleaf). Conception is possible in most women at almost any
time during the years of potential motherhood, yet there do appear to
be several factors which lead to the potential fertility of a woman
varying very much from time to time. Some women, for instance, appear
to be liable to conceive only for a certain number of days in each
month, and these are in general the two or three days immediately
following the monthly period and the day or two immediately before.
With other women, however, unions on any day of the month may lead to
conception, but this depends, possibly, not only on the woman herself
but on the vitality and probable length of life of the sperm cells of
her husband. This also varies very greatly in individuals. The longest
time which the individual sperm has been observed to remain vital after
entry into the woman is seventeen days (see Bossi, _N. Arch. d’Obstetr.
Gynocol._, April 1891).
Hence it will be realized that a union arranged to take place under
ideal and perfect conditions, perhaps on a holiday into wild and
inspiring solitudes, may result as desired in the entry of the sperm
into the womb of the woman, and yet the actual fusion of the sperm and
egg cell, and the consequent conception may not come to pass until some
days later.
Strange it is indeed in this world, in which so much scientific and
laborious observation has been devoted to all sorts of irrelevant and
trivial subjects, that knowledge of the actual processes of our own
fertilization and conception and of the extent of the significance to
the future generations of the mode and condition of the union of the
parents are almost totally unknown to scientists or doctors, and are
disregarded by the majority of the public.
A recent memoir in the French Academy of Science[1] dealing with
statistical figures (going back in France, at any rate, so far as 1853)
proves that there does seem to be a definite seasonal influence on
the power of conception. Taking the births for the whole year, it is
found they are not equally divided throughout the months, but that a
notable maximum of births is found in February and March for most of
the countries in the northern hemisphere, the actual maximum of births
being from the 15th February to the 15th March, and thus indicating
that the maximum of conceptions took place between the 5th May and the
5th June. Richet quotes Bertillon as having established the fact that
this maximum of conceptions does not depend on the chance that brides
like to be married in the spring, because an identical maximum is found
in the illegitimate birthrate. Richet gives many tables of figures,
and maintains that the maximum corresponds both in the town and in the
country, among the rich and the poor, and among the married and the
unmarried, and is, therefore, in his opinion, an actual physiological
function:--
[1] Charles Richet, “De la Variation mensuelle de la Natalité,” 1916,
Comptes rendus Acad. Sciences, Paris, pp. 141-149 and 161-166.
C’est que les conditions physiologiques de la maturation de l’ovule
et de sa fécondation ne sont pas également favorables dans toutes
les periodes de l’année. Par suite d’une ancestrale prédisposition,
au moment du printemps, chez la femme, comme chez la plupart des
animaux, mais moins nettement que chez eux, la maturation, la chute
et la fécondation de l’ovule se font dans des conditions meilleures
et plus assurées.
The corresponding maximum for the southern hemisphere arises between
August and October. This natural tendency to produce children
according to the season is, to some extent, altered by the conscious
and deliberate control of parenthood, which all the more highly
civilized countries now find that their better citizens are exerting.
This natural time for conception will, however, tend not to be thwarted
by those who are consciously regulating their lives, because from
almost every point of view, the summer is the best time in which to
experience the joys of love. As the verdant spring is the best time for
a baby to be born, the thoughtful mother-to-be will try, other things
being equal, to arrange that its birth should take place then, both for
her own sake and for that of the child. The weeks of recovery after the
strain of the birth are more easily and happily spent lying in the warm
sunshine of a spring or summer garden than in the chill of the winter
months, and even the actual expense of the birth is reduced when it
takes place in the warmth of the spring or early summer when fires and
the labour they involve will be saved.
The child too has warm air to surround it on its first introduction to
the outer world after its long period of warmth and protection within
its mother, and when in a month or two it is able to kick about on the
grass, it benefits directly from the rays of the sun and also from the
sun-warmed earth.
Various notable men and women, and, in particular, the famous Dr. Trall
of America, have held that the actual hour of conception is the one of
fate, and that the moods, feelings and conditions of the parents in
that hour work more vital magic then than they can do in any succeeding
days or weeks. Instinctively, one would like to feel that this is so.
Indeed it will take much to _disprove_ it, although it is a theme which
it is at present impossible to prove, and it must remain always only a
personal bias, until thousands of people who view marriage aright will
consciously observe and record many things and contribute them to some
thinker who will tabulate, correlate and understand them.
Whether the hour of conception affects the child directly or not, the
memory of an ardent and wonderful experience in which the pair of
lovers consciously surround themselves with beautiful conditions, and
deliberately place themselves through their love at the service of
God and humanity in the creation of the next generation, must give a
vitalizing and joyous memory to both throughout all their lives. This
memory being especially connected with the dear child of that union
must, therefore, have in this indirect way at any rate a positive
racial value.