"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 of 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.