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 const.i.tution 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 const.i.tutionally 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_."
[Ill.u.s.tration: JUST HOME FROM SCHOOL.]
TOO MANY CHILDREN.
1. LESSENING PAUPERISM.--Many of the agencies for lessening pauperism are afraid of tracing back its growth to the frequency of births under wretched conditions. One begins to question whether after all sweet charity or dignified philanthropy has not acted with an unwise reticence. Among the problems which defy practical handling this is the most complicated. The pauperism which arises from marriage is the result of the worst elements of character legalized. In America, where the boundaries of wedlock are practically boundless, it is not desirable, even were it possible, that the state should regulate marriage much further than it now does; therefore must the sociologist turn for aid to society in his struggle with pauperism.
2. RIGHT PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITIONS OF BIRTH.--Society should insist upon the right spiritual and physical conditions for birth.
It should be considered more than "a pity" when another child is born into a home too poor to receive it. The underlying selfishness of such an event should be recognized, for it brings motherhood under wrong conditions of health and money. Instead of each birth being the result of mature consideration and hallowed loves children are too often born as animals are born. To be sure the child has a father whom he can call by name. Better that there had never been a child.
3. WRONG RESULTS.--No one hesitates to declare that if is want of self-respect and morality which brings wrong results outside of marriage, but it is also the want of them which begets evil inside the marriage relation. Though there is nothing more difficult than to find the equilibrium between self-respect and self-sacrifice, yet on success in finding it depends individual and national preservation.
The fact of being wife and mother or husband and father should imply dignity and joyousness, no matter how humble the home.
4. DIFFERENCE OF OPINION AMONGST PHYSICIANS.--In regard to teaching, the difficulties are great. As soon as one advances beyond the simplest subjects of hygiene, one is met with the difference of opinions among physicians. When each one has a different way of making a mustard plaster, no wonder that each has his own notions about everything else. One doctor recommends frequent births, another advises against them.
5. DIFFERENT NATURES.--If physiological facts are taught to a large cla.s.s, there are sure to be some in it whose impressionable natures are excited by too much plain speaking, while there are others who need the most open teaching in order to gain any benefit. Talks to a few persons generally are wiser than popular lectures. Especially are talks needed by mothers and unmothered girls who come from everywhere to the city.
6. BOYS AND YOUNG MEN.--It is not women alone who require the shelter of organizations and instruction, but boys and young men. There is no double standard of morality, though the methods of advocating it depend upon the s.e.x which is to be instructed. Men are more concerned with the practical basis of morality than with its sentiment, and with the pecuniary aspects of domestic life than with its physical and mental suffering. We all may need medicine for moral ills, yet the very intangibleness of purity makes us slow to formulate rules for its growth. Under the guidance of the wise in spirit and knowledge, much can be done to create a higher standard of marriage and to proportion the number of births according to the health and income of parents.
7. FOR THE SAKE OF THE STATE.--If the home exists primarily for the sake of the individual, it exists secondarily for the sake of the state. Therefore, any home into which are continually born the inefficient children of inefficient parents, not only is a discomfort in itself, but it also furnishes members for the armies of the unemployed, which are tinkering and hindering legislation and demanding by the brute force of numbers that the state shall support them.
8. OPINIONS FROM HIGH AUTHORITIES.--In the statements and arguments made in the above we have not relied upon our own opinions and convictions, but have consulted the best authorities, and we hereby quote some of the highest authorities upon this subject.
9. REV. LEONARD DAWSON.--"How rapidly conjugal prudence might lift a nation out of pauperism was seen in France.--Let them therefore hold the maxim that the production of offspring with forethought and providence is rational nature. It was immoral to bring children into the world whom they could not reasonably hope to feed, clothe and educate."
10. MRS. FAWCETT.--"Nothing will permanently offset pauperism while the present reckless increase of population continues."
11. DR. GEORGE NAPHEYS.--"Having too many children unquestionably has its disastrous effects on both mother and children as known to every intelligent physician. Two-thirds of all cases of womb disease, says Dr. Tilt, are traceable to child-bearing in feeble women. There are also women to whom pregnancy is a nine months" torture, and others to whom it is nearly certain to prove fatal. Such a condition cannot be discovered before marriage--The detestable crime of abortion is appallingly rife in our day. It is abroad in our land to an extent which would have shocked the dissolute women of pagan RomeS--This wholesale, fashionable murder, how are we to stop it? Hundreds of vile men and women in our large cities subsist by this slaughter of the innocent."
12. REV. H.R. HAWEIS.--"Until it is thought a disgrace in every rank of society, from top to bottom of social scale, to bring into the world more children than you are able to provide for, the poor man"s home, at least, must often be a purgatory--his children dinnerless, his wife a beggar--himself too often drunk--here, then, are the real remedies: first, control the family growth according to the family means of support."
13. MONTAGUE COOKSON.--"The limitation of the number of the family--is as much the duty of married persons as the observance of chast.i.ty is the duty of those that are unmarried."
14. JOHN STUART MILL.--"Every one has aright to live. We will suppose this granted. But no one has a right to bring children into life to be supported by other people. Whoever means to stand upon the first of these rights must renounce all pretension to the last. Little improvement can be expected in morality until the production of a large family is regarded in the same light as drunkenness or any other physical excess."
15. DR. T.D. NICHOLLS.--"In the present social state, men and women should refrain from having children unless they see a reasonable prospect of giving them suitable nurture and education."
16. REV. M.J. SAVAGE.--"Some means ought to be provided for checking the birth of sickly children."
17. DR. STOCKHAM.--"Thoughtful minds must acknowledge the great wrong done when children are begotten under adverse conditions. Women must learn the laws of life so as to protect themselves, and not be the means of bringing sin-cursed, diseased children into the world. The remedy is in the prevention of pregnancy, not in producing abortion."
SMALL FAMILIES AND THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE RACE.
1. MARRIED PEOPLE MUST DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES.--It is the fashion of those who marry nowadays to have few children, often none. Of course this is a matter which married people must decide for themselves. As is stated in an earlier chapter, sometimes this policy is the wisest that can be pursued.
2. Diseased people who are likely to beget only a sickly offspring, may follow this course, and so may thieves, rascals, vagabonds, insane and drunken persons, and all those who are likely to bring into the world beings that ought not to be here. But why so many well-to-do folks should pursue a policy adapted only to paupers and criminals, is not easy to explain. Why marry at all if not to found a family that shall live to bless and make glad the earth after father and mother are gone? It is not wise to rear too many children, nor is it wise to have too few. Properly brought up, they will make home a delight, and parents happy.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A WELL NOURISHED CHILD.]
3. POPULATION LIMITED.--Galton, in his great work on hereditary genius, observes that "the time may hereafter arrive in far distant years, when the population of this earth shall be kept as strictly within bounds of number and suitability of race, as the sheep of a well-ordered moor, or the plants in an orchard-house; in the meantime let us do what we can to encourage the multiplication of the races best fitted to invent and conform to a high and generous civilization."
4. SHALL SICKLY PEOPLE RAISE CHILDREN?--The question whether sickly people should marry and propagate their kind, is briefly alluded to in an early chapter of this work. Where father and mother are both consumptive the chances are that the children will inherit physical weakness, which will result in the same disease, unless great pains are taken to give them a good physical education, and even then the probabilities are that they will find life a burden hardly worth living.
5. NO REAL BLESSING.--Where one parent is consumptive and the other vigorous, the chances are just half as great. If there is a scrofulous or consumptive taint in the blood, beware! Sickly children are no comfort to their parents, no real blessing. If such people marry, they had better, in most cases, avoid parentage.
6. WELFARE OF MANKIND.--The advancement of the welfare of mankind is a most intricate problem: all ought to refrain from marriage who cannot avoid abject poverty for their children; for poverty is not only a great evil, but tends to its own increase by leading to recklessness in marriage. On the other hand, as Mr. Galton has remarked, if the prudent avoid marriage, while the reckless marry, the inferior members will tend to supplant the better members of society.
7. PREVENTIVES.--Remember that the thousands of preventives which are advertised in papers, private circulars, etc., are not only inefficient, unreliable and worthless, but positively dangerous, and the annual mortality of females in this country from this cause alone is truly horrifying. Study nature, and nature"s laws alone will guide you safely in the path of health and happiness.
8. NATURE"S REMEDY.--Nature in her wise economy has prepared for overproduction, for during the period of pregnancy and nursing, and also most of the last half of each menstrual month, woman is naturally sterile; but this condition may become irregular and uncertain on account of stimulating drinks or immoral excesses.
THE GENERATIVE ORGANS.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MALE GENERATIVE ORGANS AND THEIR STRUCTURE AND ADAPTATION.]
1. The reproductive organs in man are the p.e.n.i.s and t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es and their appendages.
2. The p.e.n.i.s deposits the seminal life germ of the male. It is designed to fulfill the seed planting mission of human life.
3. In the accompanying ill.u.s.tration all the parts are named.
4. URETHRA.--The urethra performs the important mission of emptying the bladder, and is rendered very much larger by the pa.s.sion, and the s.e.m.e.n is propelled along through it by little layers of muscles on each side meeting above and below. It is this ca.n.a.l that is inflamed by the disease known as gonorrhoea.
5. PROSTATE GLAND.--The prostate gland is located just before the bladder. It swells in men who have previously overtaxed it, thus preventing all s.e.xual intercourse, and becomes very troublesome to void urine. This is a very common trouble in old age.
6. THE PENAL GLAND.--The penal gland, located at the end of the p.e.n.i.s, becomes unduly enlarged by excessive action and has the consistency of India rubber. It is always enlarged by erection. It is this gland at the end that draws the s.e.m.e.n forward. It is one of the most essential and wonderful constructed glands of the human body.
7. FEMALE MAGNETISM.--When the male organ comes in contact with female magnetism, the natural and proper excitement takes place. When excited without this female magnetism it becomes one of the most serious injuries to the human body. The male organ was made for a high and holy purpose, and woe be to him who pollutes his manhood by practicing the secret vice. He pays the penalty in after years either by the entire loss of s.e.xual power, or by the afflictions of various urinary diseases.
8. NATURE PAYS all her debts, and when there is an abuse of organ, penalties must follow. If the hand is thrust into the fire it will be burnt.