Why Bring Into the World Idiots, Fools, Criminals and Lunatics?
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 the holy and happy purpose of their
Creator. See those miserable and depraved scape-goats of humanity,
the demented simpletons, the half-crazy, unbalanced multitudes
which infest our earth, and fill our prisons with criminals and
our poor-houses with paupers. Oh! the boundless capabilities and
perfections of our God-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 lust 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 constitution?
3. AS ARE THE PARENTS, physically, mentally and morally when they
stamp their own image and likeness upon progeny, so will be the
constitution 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 flesh! 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 ennoble 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
assuming 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
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 constitution, 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 illustrates in any required number and
variety or cases, showing that progeny inherits the constitutional
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 constitutional. 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 constitutor of parents, thus becoming almost their
fac-similes?
8. ILLUSTRATIONS.--A whaleman was severely hurt by a harpooned and
desperate whale turning upon the small boat, and, by his monstrous
jaws, smashing 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, constitution 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 constitution.
The same is true of the transmission of those diseases consequent
on the violation of the law of chastity, and the same conclusion
established thereby.
9. PARENT'S PARTICIPATION.--Each parent furnishing at indispensable
portion of the materials of life, and somehow or other, contributes
parentally to the formation of the constitutional 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 constitution.
10. ILLEGITIMATES OR BASTARDS also furnish strong proof of the
correctness of this our leading doctrine. They are generally lively,
sprightly, witty, frolicksome, knowing, quiet of perception, apt to
learn, full of passion, 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 passion
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 sexual embrace. Let parents recall, as nearly as may be their
circumstances and states of body and mind at this period, and place
them by the side of the physical and mental constitutions 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.
13. THE VITAL PERIOD.--The physical condition of parents at the vital
period of transmission of life should be a perfect condition of health
in both body and mind, and a vigorous condition of all the animal
organs and functions.
14. MUSCULAR PREPARATION.--Especially should parents cultivate their
muscular system preparatory to the perfection of this function, and of
their children; because, to impart strength and stamina to offspring
they must of necessity both possess a good muscular organization,
and also bring it into vigorous requisition at this period. For this
reason, if for no other, let those of sedentary habits cultivate
muscular energy preparatory to this time of need.
15. THE SEED.--So exceedingly delicate are the seeds of life, that,
unless planted in a place of perfect security, they must all be
destroyed and our race itself extinguished. And what place is as
secure as that chosen, where they can be reached only with the utmost
difficulty, and than only as the peril of even life itself? Imperfect
seed sown in poor ground means a sickly harvest.
16. HEALTHY PEOPLE--MOST CHILDREN.--The most healthy classes have
the most numerous families; but that, as luxury enervates society, it
diminishes the population, by enfeebling parents, nature preferring
none rather than those too weakly to live and be happy, and thereby
rendering that union unfruitful which is too feeble to produce
offspring sufficiently strong to enjoy life. Debility and disease
often cause barrenness. Nature seems to rebel against sickly
offspring.
17. WHY CHILDREN DIE.--Inquire whether one or both the parents of
those numerous children that die around us, have not weak lungs, or a
debilitated stomach, or a diseased liver, or feeble muscles, or else
use them but little, or disordered nerves, or some other debility or
form of disease. The prevalence of summer complaints, colic, cholera
infantum, and other affections of these vital organs of children is
truly alarming, sweeping them into their graves by the million.
Shall other animals rear nearly all their young, and shall man,
constitutionally by far the strongest of them all, lose half or more
of his? is this the order of nature? No, but their death-worm is born
in and with them, and by parental agency.
18. GRAVE-YARD STATISTICS.--Take grave-yard statistics in August, and
then say, whether most of the deaths of children are not caused by
indigestion, or feebleness of the bowels, liver, etc., or
complaints growing out of them? Rather, take family statistics from
broken-hearted parents! And yet, in general, those very parents
who thus suffer more than words can tell, were the first and main
transgressors, because they entailed those dyspeptic, heart, and other
kindred affections so common among American parents upon their own
children, and thereby almost as bad as killed them by inches; thus
depriving them of the joys of life, and themselves of their greatest
earthly treasure!
19. ALL CHILDREN MAY DIE.--Children may indeed die whose parents are
healthy, but they almost must whose parents are essentially ailing in
one or more of their vital organs; because, since they inherit this
organ debilitated or diseased, any additional cause of sickness
attacks this part first, and when it gives out, all go by the board
together.
20. PARENTS MUST LEARN AND OBEY.--How infinitely more virtuous and
happy would your children be if you should be healthy in body, and
happy in mind, so as to beget in them a constitutionally healthy and
vigorous physiology, along with a serene and happy frame of mind!
Words are utterly powerless in answer, and so is everything but a
lifetime of consequent happiness or misery! Learn and obey, then,
the laws of life and health, that you may both reap the rich reward
yourself, and also shower down upon your children after you, blessings
many and most exalted. Avoid excesses of all kinds, be temperate,
take good care of the body and avoid exposures and disease, and your
children will be models of health and beauty.
21. THE RIGHT CONDITION.--The great practical inference is, that those
parents who desire intellectual and moral children, must love each
other; because, this love, besides perpetually calling forth and
cultivating their higher faculties, awakens them to the highest pitch
of exalted action in that climax, concentration, and consummation of
love which propagates their existing qualities, the mental endowment
of offspring being proportionate to the purity and intensity of
parental love.
22. THE EFFECTS.--The children of affectionate parents receive
existence and constitution when love has rendered the mentality of
their parents both more elevated and more active than it is by nature,
of course the children of loving parents are both more intellectual
and moral by nature than their parents. Now, if these children and
their companions also love one another, this same law which renders
the second generation better than the first, will of course render
the third still better than the second, and thus of all succeeding
generations.
23. ANIMAL IMPULSE.--You may preach and pray till doomsday--may
send out missionaries, may circulate tracts and Bibles, and multiply
revivals and all the means of grace, with little avail; because, as
long as mankind go on, as now, to propagate by animal impulse, so long
must their offspring be animal, sensual, devilish! But only induce
parents cordially to love each other, and you thereby render their
children constitutionally talented and virtuous. Oh! parents, by as
much as you prefer the luxuries of concord to the torments of discord,
and children that are sweet dispositioned and highly intellectual to
those that are rough wrathful, and depraved, be entreated to "_love
one another_."
[Illustration: JUST HOME FROM SCHOOL.]
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