Confidential Chats with Boys

by William Lee Howard

The mating has taken place, the eggs of the female have become vitalized. The life germs have worked their way into the interior of the eggs; the eggs now commence to take on a protective covering; the shell. This soon grows to a hard shell. The eggs now being safely protected they drop out into the nest, and when all have been laid, the mother, and at times, the father bird, sit upon them until the little ones are hatched.

If the female bird was kept in a cage and away from the male bird, the eggs would come just the same. But no amount of sitting upon them or putting them in an incubator would bring forth the young. The reason you all readily understand; the eggs have not been vitalized, given the sperm, by the male bird. So if you want to breed chickens you must always have a cock in the yard.

All breeders of chickens first examine the eggs they are to put under a hen or in an incubator. By the light of a candle in a dark room you can see a tiny spot in the egg if it has been vitalized. This spot is the germinal spot—the evidence of the male element. Such an egg will hatch; one without such a spot will simply rot.

When we reach the higher scale in animal life, where the dog, horse, lion, belong, we have reached that point where all reproduction takes place in the same manner as in man. I am referring now to details only, for as I have told you, the PRINCIPLES of reproduction are the same for everything that lives.

All through nature, if you carefully think over the strict laws governing the continuation of life, you will be struck with wonder and reverence; not curiosity nor evil thoughts.

At first it may sound a little harsh to have me tell you that you were developed from a single cell in your mother’s womb which had been vitalized by the seed of your father. But such is the undeniable truth, and it is the truth concerning ourselves that I want you to understand.

Of course we are different from the mere animals in having a something in us that they do not apparently possess. This “something” may be called a soul, the essence of a Great Will, the evidence of God. But it makes no matter what you have been taught to call it—it is there; and some day you will recognize it.

It is the great Power back of us, in us, ahead of us. It is the something we can feel, but not see nor demonstrate. As you study over what I tell you it will be plain that, while we can and should understand the laws of nature, this Power, the actual Power itself must be studied in our hearts.

But no man has done justice to this great Will, or to God, or to himself, who has avoided trying to understand those laws which are indubitably for our benefit and future progress. One of the plain duties which the law points out to us, is that of so regulating our lives that we can give health and moral strength to those who come after us. And this can never be done unless we know and obey those laws which we have plainly set before us.

Before going further into the facts of reproduction, let us see how strict Nature is in some of her laws controlling this process. Remember what I said about the marvelous fact that fishes do not inter-breed; that is, that the seed from a male salmon will not enter the eggs of a female bass, nor that of a “shiner” into a sunfish. Nature will not allow such a mixing of things. A dog cannot impregnate a cat, only a dog. So you see that Nature has so arranged matters that in spite of the running wild of all kinds of animals and species, each egg is so chemically adjusted that only the male seed made for its particular eggs can vitalize them.