As Dr. Saleeby has well said: "If the struggle toward individual perfection be religious, so assuredly is the struggle, less egoistic indeed, toward racial perfection. * * * And they that shall be of us shall build up the old waste places; for we shall raise up the foundations of many generations."
And in all this, also, we find ever present the distinctive note of modern thought, viz., "Not more children, but better ones; not more births, but less deaths and more survivals; not numerical birth values, but qualitative birth values and numerical survival values."
LESSON VII
PRE-NATAL INFLUENCES
The term "Pre-Natal" of course means "before birth," and Pre-Natal Influences are those influences exerted upon the child before its birth into the world. The students of Eugenics are vitally interested in the subject of Pre-Natal Influences, as they recognize that therein is to be found the secret of much which will work along the line of "better offspring," and general race-betterment.
Pre-Natal Influences (as the term is used in the present consideration of the subject) may be considered as manifesting in three phases, as follows:
(1) The influence of the physical, mental, and moral "family characteristics" of the parents, transmitted to the child along the lines of heredity.
(2) The influence of the acquired personal characteristics of the parents (particularly the acquired characteristics which are especially active at and just previous to the time of actual conception), transmitted to the child along the lines of heredity.
(3) The influence of "maternal impressions" (after conception, and during the period of gestation or pregnancy) transmitted to the child physiologically and psychologically.