With these few words I send the work on its mission hoping it will bear good fruit.
M. L. H.
CONTENTS.
| STIRPICULTURE. | |
| Page. | |
| Plato's Restrictions on Parentage; Lycurgan Laws;Plutarch on the Training of Children; InfanticideAmong the Greeks; Group Marriage; MakingChildren the Property of the State; GrecianMethods Not Suitable to Our Time; SexualSelection; Difficulties in the Way; An Experimentin Stirpiculture; Intermarriage; Woman'sSelective Action; Man's and Woman's Co-operation;The Individual's Rights; Spiritual Sympathyin Marriage; | [9] |
| PRENATAL CULTURE. | |
| Jacob's Flocks; An Illustrative Case; Beliefs ofPrimitive Peoples; Birthmarks Rare; Why ChildrenResemble Parents; Life's Experiences AffectingChild; Germ-plasm; Congenital Deformities;Psychical Diseases; Telegony; Power ofHeredity; Sobriety in the Father; Sacredness ofParentage; Self-control; | [55] |
| HEREDITY AND EDUCATION. | |
| Theories; Continuity of the Germ-plasm; A RationalView of Heredity; Heredity and the Educationof Children; Intellectual Acquirements; Instinct;Knowledge or Heredity; Individuality; Spectreof Heredity; | [100] |
| EVOLUTION'S HOPEFUL PROMISE FOR AHEALTHIER RACE. | |
| Sexual Selection; Human Selection; Natural Selection;Conflict between Evolutionary Theoriesand our Humane Sentiments; Ideal of Health;Adaptation to Environment; Knowledge; Effectsof Living at High Pressure; Girls in ManufacturingDistricts; Co-operation: an Example;Hygiene; | [130] |
| THE GERM-PLASM; ITS RELATION TO OFFSPRING. | |
| What is the Germ-plasm? The Primitive Egg; Fertilizationof the Mother-cell Necessary to ProduceTrue Germ-plasm; What Fertilization Does;Its Process; Helps to Explain Heredity; Healthof the Germ-plasm Necessary in Stirpiculture;Surplus Vitality Necessary for Producing theBest Children; Duncan's Statistics as to Ages ofParents of Finest Children; Effects of Alcoholon Offspring; Food and the Germ-plasm; Effectof Air and Water on Germ-plasm; Effect of Diseaseson Germ-plasm; Every Child Born an Experiment; | [162] |
| FEWER AND BETTER CHILDREN. | |
| Darwin's Opinions; Race Modifications by NaturalSelection; Grant Allen's Views; Spencer's Viewson Parental Duties; Limiting Offspring Amongthe Natives of Uganda; The Fijians; Childrenof Large Families often Superior to those inSmall Families; Some Reasons for this; | [179] |
| A THEORETICAL BABY. | |
| Our First Baby; We had Theories; What Some ofThem Were; My Wife's Love for Me; My Sentiments;The Child's Easy Birth; Mother's RapidConvalescence; The Child's First Bath; FormingGood Habits Early; No Crying at Night;Never Rocked to Sleep; His Bed; Keeping theStomach and Bowels Right; Colic, Irritabilityand the Necessity for Diapers Eliminated; Numberof Meals Daily; The Infant's Clothing; AtOne Year Old; Teething Gives Little Trouble;Requires Considerable Water; Learning to Creep,Stand, Walk and Talk by His Own Efforts; InventsHis Own Amusements; CompanionshipWith Parents; Mothering; Learning Self-control;Obedience; Playmates; | [184] |
| Notes | [199] |
STIRPICULTURE.
Natural selection, which is the central doctrine of Darwinism, has been explained as the "survival of the fittest." On this process has depended the progress observable throughout organic nature to which the term evolution is applied; for, although there has been from time to time degradation, that is, a retrogression, this has had relation only to particular forms, organic life as a whole evidencing progress towards perfection. When man appeared as the culmination of evolution under terrestrial conditions, natural selection would seem almost to have finished its work, which was taken up, however, by man himself, who was able by "artificial" selection to secure results similar to those which Nature had attained. This is true especially in relation to animals, the domestication of which has always been practiced by man, even while in a state of nature. Domestication is primarily a psychical process, but it is attended with physical changes consequent on confinement and variation in food and habits. This alone would hardly account, however, for the great number of varieties among animals that have been long domesticated, and it is probable that actual "stirpiculture" has been practiced from very early times. This term is derived from the Latin stirpis, a stock or race, and cultus, culture or cultivation, and it means, therefore, the cultivation of a stock or race, although it has come to be used in the sense of the "breeding of offspring," and particularly of human offspring. It is evident, however, that in relation to man this is too restricted a sense, and it must be extended so as to embrace as well the rearing and training as the breeding of children, in fact, cultivation in its widest sense, in which is always implied the idea of improvement.
