Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/51

 of a debauchee or human goat. It is troublesome; hence is worse than wasted. It is not possible for a low organization to give birth to a high or fine one, albeit such organizations often greatly improve upon themselves, and produce offspring greatly their own superiors; yet no one could -expect a race-horse to issue from a cart-drab, or a fine-limbed courser to spring from the loins of a brew-horse. A dog is dog all over, and so is a doggish man. The dog-nature lurks in every particle of his being, and is sure to be transmitted, with less or greater force, to his posterity, in exact proportion as the dog-nature slept or preponderated during the act that launched a soul into being; and when coarse parents produce finer children, it proves that outer circumstances were strongly in the ascendant over the inherited bias of the general dogativeness. A heart-woman will, even under bad conditions, produce a better child than a mere heady one, even if the latter is capable of maternity, which, happily, is seldom the case; for, it is well known that savages increase far less rapidly than civilizees, and lucky it is for the world that it is so, else chaos would soon come again. Everything on earth is chemical, and under chemical law, — even human morals, — for nearly all our sins are the result of chemical incompatibilities all the way along. Any woman, who is kept contented, happy, loved, during pregnancy, will carry every stage of the gestative process a great deal farther than would be possible under the reverse state of conjugal and domestic affairs, and the consequence will be a child to be proud of. But let her be worried, and she will not fail to hurry her work, and that will be a babe of inferior make-up, in all respects.

A negress, in Charleston, South Carolina, bore a monkey-boy, because the natural processes were arrested at that stage of embrionic development. Another negress was exceedingly happy during that period, and she gave a "Blind Tom" to the world and God, — a boy who was the very quintessence of musical genius. Now, had her intellect been cherished and nurtured, the boy would have been a mental prodigy as well. Whatever of talent or power the writer hereof possesses is all owing to the peculiar mental conditions of the dear mother who bore him, — so far as power goes, while the angular impress of his father will never be effaced, within the limits of this earthly life. Here, then, is the