A 
VIEW AT THE FOUNDATIONS: 
OR, 
Jfirst Causes of Cbararter, 
AS OPERATIVE BEFORE BIRTH, FROM HEREDITARY AND 
SPIRITUAL SOURCES 
BEING A TREATISE ON THE ORGANIC STRUCTURE AND QUALITY O* 
THE HUMAN SOUL, AS DETERMINED BY PRE-NATAL CON- 
DITIONS IN THE PARENTAGE AND ANCESTRY, 
AND HOW FAR WE CAN DIRECT AND 
CONTROL THEM. 
Author of “ God in his Providence," “ Compendium and Life of 
Swedenborg,” etc. 
WOODBURY M. FERNALD, 
" t \t tragfet st?Jr — pal- a. IS. 
BOSTON 1889 
LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS 
IO MILK STREET NEXT “OLD SOUTH MEETING HOUSE” 
NEW YORk’cHARLES T. DILLINGHAM 
71S AND 720 BROADWAY Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by 
WOODBURY M. FERNALD, 
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. TO 
ALL T H I M: A R B 11 Q„ 
BUT PARTICULARLY TO 
Those who contemplate entering that Holy Union, 
©|)is IThile treatise 
IS RELIGIOUSLY INSCRIBED. P11EFACE. 
“ In the biography of eminent men, great care has generally 
been taken to show at what school or college they were educat- 
ed, under what able professor, and the particular course of study 
pursued. Yet how unimportant are these facts, when we reflect 
that a vast number of men, of only common capacities, pass 
through the same college, under the same able professors, and 
pursue the same course of study, without having been raised 
above mediocrity ? The inference then is, that the biographer 
must go farther back than education, to elicit the true cause 
which produced this pre-eminence in the subject of his memoir. 
And to wThat glorious results might not such inquiry lead—■ 
probably to the important result of the mental and physical im- 
provement of the whole human race. A nd he who can establish 
the practicability of such improvement, will have bestowed upon 
the world the choicest legacy ever bequeathed to humanity.” * 
In regard to the phrase, “ Moral and Intellectual Qualities 
Transmissible,” it has been objected by some, that it is not 
strictly true. It is not the very, identical, actual character of 
the man, that is transmissible to his children, but proclivities to 
that same character. We acknowledge a degree of truth in 
this: at the same time, it is such proclivity as, to a degree, 
inevitably insures the character, and may be said to be, per- 
haps, more strictly, the natural ground or foundation upon 
which a man builds his own more personal and spiritual charac- 
ter, and into which is inseminated the finer and higher essen- 
* Intellectual and Moral Qualities Transmissible. New York: Wiley 
and Putnam, 1843. 6 
PREFACE. 
ces. It amounts, therefore, to the same thing in effect, whether 
we say qualities or proclivities transmissible. The result to the 
character is similar, for, in a certain sense, qualities are in 
proclivities, and proclivities in qualities. 
“ The life and happiness of individuals, the love and harmony 
of families, the prosperity and stability of States and Kingdoms,, 
and the protection of life, liberty, and person, are more depen- 
dent on influences that bear upon human beings, before birth, 
than on any influence that can be brought to bear on them 
afterwards. What is organized into us, in our pre-natal state? 
is of more consequence to us, and more vital to our triumph 
over the temptations and obstacles that impede our progress 
towards perfection and happiness, than what is educated into 
us after we are born.” * 
“ We are physiologically connected and set forth in our be- 
ginnings ; and it is a matter of immense consequence to our 
character, what the connection is. In our birth, we not only 
begin to breathe, and circulate blood, but it is a question hugely 
significant, whose the blood may be. For in this we have 
whole rivers of predispositions, good or bad, set running in us— 
as much more powerful to shape our future than all tuitional 
and regulative influences that come after, as they are earlier 
in their beginning, deeper in their insertion, and more constant 
in their operation.” f 
“ He who can convince the world of the importance of the 
laws of hereditary descent, and induce mankind to conduct 
themselves accordingly, will do more good to them, and con- 
tribute more to their improvement, than all institutions and all 
systems of education.” J 
The great problem of our day is, how to produce the best origi- 
nal forms of humanity, for this world and the next. 
W. M. F. 
* Henry C. Wright. f Dr. Horace Bushnell. t Spurzheim. CONTENTS. 
1. THE SOUL AS AN ORGANIC STRUCTURE 9 
2. INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL QUALITIES TRANSMISSI- 
BLE FROM PARENTS TO CHILDREN 19 
3. FACTS OF TRANSMISSION, AND HOW FAR WE CAN 
CONTROL THEM 33 
4. CONNECTION OF THE NATURAL BIRTH WITH THE SPI- 
RITUAL; MARRIAGE, Etc 47 
£i. POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES OF HUMAN PER- 
FECTION, AS BASED UPON THE LAW OF HEREDI- 
TARY DESCENT 65 
6. REGENERATION TRANSMISSIBLE, BY NATURAL DE- 
SCENT, TO THE CHILDREN OF REGENERATE PA- 
RENTS 104 
7. LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, 
PARENTAGE, Etc 117 
8. LAWS OF HEREDITARY DESCENT, FACTS, Etc., ILLUS- 
TRATIVE 146 
9. OTHER FACTS, MARRIAGE, PARENTAGE, Etc 170 
10. DESTINY AND THE HUMAN WILL 185 
11. PHILOSOPHY OF MORAL AND SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE 193 
12. CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS 202 FIRST CAUSES OF CHARACTER. 
I. 
THE SOUL AS AN ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 
THAT the human soul is an organized struc- 
ture is a truth which we must assume, for 
the most part, as a foregone conclusion with the 
reader, or one likely to be reached by him in the 
progress of his thought. For there can be no evi- 
dence of an exclusively scientific or rational nature 
so convincing as the testimony of the Seers and of 
the Scriptures ; and where this fails, the analogies 
and considerations which might be offered are com- 
paratively feeble and insufficient to one who is dis- 
posed to doubt or deny it. We think, however, 
that among the thoughtful at the present day, its 
truth is generally admitted. For no one who 
thinks at all worthily can think of the soul as 
utterly formless: if it is any thing, it must be a 10 
THE SOUL AS AN ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 
substance of some kind ; and if a substance, it 
must have form; and if any form at all, — if any 
thing but a mere conglomerate chaos, — why not 
the human form, which is the universal testimony 
.of the Seers and of the Scriptures ? Why not a 
completely organized spiritual structure, — man in 
all his plenitude of internal, immortal powers ? 
But it matters not to the practical conclusions 
of our subject, whether we think of the soul as 
distinctly organized or not, as the body is, so be it 
that we give it some form, or some substantial ex- 
istence as an entity within the physical organism, 
and which came there by some law or process of 
nature, which has a definite quality and character 
according to its antecedents, and which has also a 
most wonderful sympathy with the body, showing 
a connection at once vital, profound, and inter- 
esting. 
Let us pass here, briefly, upon the common, or 
rather, the scholastic definition of spirit. It would 
seem to be sufficient for its own refutation. Spirit, 
we are told in the language of the schools, is a 
substance without form, parts, divisibility, color, 
extension, or any of the properties of matter. 
What is this but a mockery to the human under- THE SOUL AS AN ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 
11 
standing? For, if spirit be any substance at all, 
form or shape of some kind is inevitable : and so, 
we should infer, of parts, color, and indeed all the 
qualities that are usually attributed to matter, in 
a higher and more refined degree. We cannot, 
indeed, weigh it, and measure it, and analyze it, by 
the scales and rules and chemistry of this world ; 
but in its own proper world, I make no doubt, it 
can be tested in many ways perfectly correspon- 
dent to its grosser counterpart in this world of 
matter. 
In short, this attempt to define and refine spir- 
itual nature into nothing, must be repudiated ere 
we can advance a single step, rationally, into the 
truth and reality of spiritual things. We make no 
pretensions to absolute verity, nor would we dog- 
matize at all on so high a subject; but we confess 
our strong partiality for the theory of one only 
eternal substance, out of which all things have 
been unfolded, visible and invisible. And the 
mind of man, as far as we can express it in a brief 
psychological formula, is the positive and negative 
motion, complex play, action and re-action, of the 
most highly refined and organized substance. Or 
in other words, spirit and matter are the two ex* 12 
THE SOUL AS AN ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 
tremes of one only substance. Not that spirit is 
a refinement of matter, as is sometimes crudely 
said, nor that matter is gross and material spirit; 
but that one is discreted and separated from the 
other by a process which leaves them both differ- 
ent substances, yet as originally one. The subject 
is somewhat unappreciable to minds not familiar- 
ized with it; but all we can say here is, for it is 
not really essential to our main theme, that God 
has probably created matter from Ilimself, not con- 
tinuously, or so that it is still a part of Him after 
it is separated from Him; but discretely, to use 
the philosophical term, or so that, though it is pro- 
duced from Him, it is then no longer divine, but 
natural, finite, and material. And the process must 
be considered as from eternity to eternity, and not 
as diminishing the infinite by quantity. If any 
should choose to say that matter was the precip- 
itate of spirit, it would not be far from the truth, 
though the whole doctrine of this most elusive and 
controverted subject is probably to be found, as 
nearly as it can be anywhere, in Swedenborg’s 
distinction between “ discrete ” and “ continuous ” 
degrees, to which we must refer the reader. 
But to eschew all theorizing which is in any THE SOUL AS AN ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 
13 
manner doubtful or questionable, and to confine 
ourselves within strictly truthful and practical 
limits, we only ask the admission of substance and 
form to the soul, which none can deny without in- 
volvement in the grossest absurdity. But if we 
can add to this the following simple statement of 
the Seer just quoted, then is the groundwork of 
our subject open, manifest, and clear. The soul or 
spirit of man, he says, is “ the interior man, for it 
appears there altogether as a man, with all the 
members and organs that man has, and it is also 
the man himself in the body. That this is the case 
may also be manifest from the angels seen, as re- 
corded in the Word, who were all seen in the 
human form.” 
Let us now attend somewhat to the physical and 
psychical conditions under which this form is man- 
ifest, and by which it is really made existent in the 
world. Clergymen of a certain class, and others of 
their stamp, are accustomed to treat the human 
soul, which they crudely contemplate as a form- 
less substance, without considering its physical 
and psychical conditions, and its intimate union 
and sympathy with the body. And the immense 
amount of good which is done by these merely 14 
THE SOUL AS AN ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 
moral and spiritual appeals, and the intellectual 
influence which is thus brought to bear upon hu- 
manity, we do not wish to overlook or disparage. 
But the question we have to ask is, how does this 
influence take effect ? To what are these appeals 
addressed, and how do they operate? And here 
the fact comes up to us in all its gigantic impor- 
tance, of the organic condition of this mass of 
humanity, in its psychical and physical relations. 
When great conversions are made, when multi- 
tudes are aroused from apathy and indifference, 
when bad men become suddenly good men (but 
mark from how bad to how good they suddenly 
become), the influence so wrought is always upon 
those brains and spirits which stood before most 
susceptible to these influences, by their good phy- 
siological and spiritual conditions. I know that 
there are apparent exceptions to this remark. I 
know that sometimes extremely bad men — per- 
sons quite gone in sensuality and degradation (as 
in the case of any great revival of religion, — that 
wide-spread, deep excitement in Ireland, for in- 
stance), are among the first to become the sub- 
jects of these spiritual influences, while many 
more moral and externally respectable men es- THE SOUL AS AN ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 
15 
cape. But to say nothing of the causes which are 
beyond the notice of our eye, and the means in 
the spiritual world which for certain reasons may 
be made operative and efficient upon them, while 
they cannot so well upon others to us more prom- 
ising, be it observed that this does not invalidate 
the position in the least, that some conditions, some 
preparations, in the physical and spiritual brain, 
are necessary to the production of any effect at all. 
If a man had no brain and heart, I fancy he could 
not be converted. By parity of reasoning, the 
better his natural soul is, the more easily can he 
be converted. For there is no absolutely “ irre- 
sistible ” or unconditional grace in the matter. 
Therefore, all other circumstances and conditions 
being equal, here and in the spiritual world (both 
worlds being so intimately connected), those come 
most easily under the power of moral and spirit- 
ual appeals, whose physical and spiritual organisms 
are most suitably prepared. It is a work wholly 
grounded in organic relations of some kind. The 
very heavens are organized; each angel has his 
own peculiar brain and body; God himself must 
have, infinitely speaking, an organic existence; 
and the Holy Spirit, when it sweeps through the 16 
THE SOUL AS AN ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 
hearts of men, has its own laws, is limited by its 
own receptacles, and makes the music or the dis- 
cord of humanity according to the substantial ma- 
terials over which and through which its divine 
breath circulates. 
Many remain in negligence and criminality from 
their circumstances in social life, position, habit, or 
education; but still so well organized and attem- 
pered as only to wait the influence of powerful 
appeal, clear knowledge, and realization, to turn 
them from wickedness to virtue. What, then, is 
the first, or proximate cause, of their conversion 
and change ? Fine physical and psychological 
conditions, including the entire spiritual organ- 
ism itself, without which, in some degree, all the 
eloquence of the pulpit, and the thunders and 
splendors of eternity, could not awake them from 
their moral torpor. If this is not true, let the 
pulpit try its influences upon those hard and in- 
tractable specimens of human nature to be found 
in our State Prisons, — whose brains, internally 
and externally, spiritually and physically, are 
notched and angularized by the ancestral discord 
of many generations, and, with their bodies, shorn 
of all beautiful and moral proportions. Of course, THE SOUL AS AN ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 
17 
something can be done, but little comparatively. 
Now, if this is true in extreme cases, it is true in 
principle : and we only need to make the proper 
discriminations in degree, to announce, as the 
foundations of all human excellence, those nice or- 
ganic conditions of matter and spirit, which are as 
capable of being shaped and moulded by human 
art and science, as the clay in the hands of the 
potter. 
And, therefore, antecedently to the work of 
re-formation, we need, most radically, formation. 
More than reformers we need formers. At least 
in a future age we shall. It is comparatively a 
hard work to re-cast and re-form the discordant ma- 
terials which have received their mis-shapen birth 
and fixity by the influence of a thousand genera- 
tions. But to form — to create anew, with the 
original proportions of beauty and perfection, is 
the most important, as it may be the easiest work. 
And the problem is, how to produce the best ori- 
ginal forms of humanity, for this world and the 
next ? For it should be observed that this subject 
is so important, that not only time, but eternity, is 
involved in its far-reaching consequences. The 
human soul receives its impress — its style — its 18 
THE SOUL AS AN ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 
distinguishing characteristics, which it must bear 
through all eternity, before its birth into this in- 
cipient world. Its discords may eventually be 
outgrown, or destroyed; but never the distinctive 
fashion of the man: and even the discords, we 
have reason to know, are not only perpetuated all 
through this life, but deeply and sadly into that 
life which is to come. No subject, then, can claim 
superioiity to this. n. 
INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL QUALITIES TRANSMIS 
SIBLE FROM PARENTS TO CHILDREN. 
WE are here brought to the consideration of 
the law of hereditary transmission of qual- 
ities. Every one knows that physical peculiarities 
are transmitted from family to family. The form 
of the face, the figure, the temperament, and many 
striking particulars, are frequently alike in parents 
and children. The disposition to various disor- 
ders, as scrofula, consumption, dropsy, gout, epi- 
lepsy, deafness, insanity, &c., is frequently the 
inheritance of birth. Sometimes also anomalies 
and deformities can be thus traced ; as of a family 
mentioned by Sir Anthony Carlisle, in which were 
supernumerary toes and fingers for four genera- 
tions. They were introduced by a female who 
had six fingers on each hand, and six toes on each 
foot. Now, if physical qualities and disorders are 
governed by this law of hereditary descent, it 20 
INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL 
would seem a ready inference that mental and 
moral qualities must be, for these latter are only 
able to manifest themselves through the physical 
organism. And it is proved that certain peculiari- 
ties of physical organism are necessary to the cor- 
responding peculiarities of spiritual character. In 
fact, the spirit itself, being in general a perfect 
counterpart and analogue of the body, owns the 
sovereignty of similar laws. And family resem- 
blances are quite as common in minds as in bodies. 
The only ground of objection to the universality 
of this law is in those apparent exceptions which 
sometimes occur, as where parents of superior tal- 
ents and virtue often have children of an inferior 
nature, and where, in many families, there are indi- 
viduals of very different and even opposite capaci- 
ties. But it should be remembered that where 
there is only one superior parent, married to a 
partner of inferior conditions, the qualities of the 
offspring must be uncertain. It is a common ob- 
servation that boys resemble their mother, and 
girls their father; and that men of great talents 
almost always descend from intelligent mothers. 
This last remark, however, must be taken with 
many grains of allowance. Still, there is so much QUALITIES TRANSMISSIBLE. 
21 
truth in it — there are so many instances of great 
and commanding geniuses, both in the moral and 
intellectual world, whose distinction can be traced 
in an open and direct way, more or less, to a supe- 
riority of maternal descent, — of which may be 
mentioned, Bacon, Bonaparte, Milton, Goethe, Cu- 
vier, Edwards, Washington, Sir William Jones, 
John Wesley, and a host of others,* that we are 
inclined to bestow a few moments’ notice upon it, 
as also upon a most remarkable statement of an 
apparently opposite character, put forth by Eman- 
uel Swedenborg, that the soul only is from the 
father, and the body from the mother ! “ The soul, 
which is from the father, is the very man; and 
the body, which is from the mother, is not man in 
itself, but from the soul.” True Christian Reli- 
gion, No. 103. The statement is also repeated in 
his work on Conjugial Love, 206, where it is rep- 
resented that the soul receives its clothing only 
from the mother, analogous to seeds cast into the 
ground, and receiving a body from nature. The 
assertion is also fortified by a reference to a gen- 
* See, for an illustration of the parentage of these men, an excellent 
little work entitled ‘‘Intellectual and Moral Qualities Transmissible:” 
referred to in the preface. 22 
INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL 
eral image of the father’s face in each descendant, 
when in just series ; or if not in the immediate pa- 
rentage, in the more remote ; and by the fact that 
nations are known from their first father. “For, 
there is in the seed of every one, from which he is 
conceived, a graft or offset of the father’s soul, in 
its fulness, within a certain covering from the ele- 
ments of nature, by which the body is formed in 
the womb of the mother.” And since this state- 
ment is fundamental, also, to the author’s theology 
— his doctrine of the incarnation of our Lord, and 
his miraculous conception in the womb of the 
Virgin, it is evidently made with great care. 
Moreover, from the character of Swedenborg as 
a Seer as well as a Philosopher, and his well-sus- 
tained reputation, we are satisfied it is not made 
without some substantial reason, or truth founded 
in absolute science. But whether it has been well 
understood by all his followers, or whether he or 
his translators have not used the term “body,” 
with reference to the mother, in a loose and unac- 
customed sense, — these are the questions. Cer- 
tainly, so acute and able a mind as that of the 
Swedish Seer and philosopher could not have 
meant that the fleshly, material body was all that QUALITIES TRANSMISSIBLE. 
23 
the mother contributed of her nature to the child! 
What infatuated stupidity this would be ! And 
how it is contradicted by the noble line of brilliant 
and superior men and women whose distinction 
can be directly traced to the superiority of the 
maternal parentage ! What then could he mean ? 
In reply, it must be observed, that the phraseol 
ogy of Swedenborg is in many instances peculiar. 
And in the use of the term “ soul,” he some- 
times, and perhaps oftenest, uses it to express the 
whole soul, or what we commonly mean by the im- 
mortal part; and sometimes, when he means to be 
more metaphysically exact, he uses the word as 
expressive only of the inmost or supremest part of 
man — that spiritual degree of his nature which is 
above consciousness. As in his treatise on Influx, 
No. 8, he says, “ The human soul, as being the 
superior spiritual substance in man, receives its 
influx immediately from God; the mind, as an 
inferior spiritual substance, receives its influx 
from God mediately through the spiritual world.” 
Here is a plain difference between the soul, in 
its inmost degree, and the mind, with its affections 
and thoughts. The mind is considered as some- 
thing lower, or more external. Now, it must have 24 
INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL 
been in this latter sense, in which he speaks of the 
“ clothing ” of the soul as conferred by the mother. 
And although he uses the term u body ” with re- 
gard to it, yet it must be remembered that Swe- 
denborg always speaks of spiritual things as exist- 
ing in form and organism, and he even explicitly 
says that the soul in the other life “ retains a kind 
of border, [or circumambient accretion] from the 
purest things of nature, around it.” The body, 
then, which is from the mother, in Swedenborg’s 
sense, must have been the spiritual body, or cloth- 
ing of the inmost soul, in connection also with the 
fleshly body of nature. In no other sense could 
he, otherwise than most stupidly, say that the 
body only is derived from the mother. And the 
soul which the mother communicates, as may be 
inferred even from him, is the comparatively exter- 
nal soul, or mind, not the inmost supreme ens, and 
this is what we believe. And this is the very 
truth which we wish to suggest as the reason 
why, after all, too much stress must not be put 
upon the proverbial saying that great men have 
generally had remarkable or distinguished moth- 
ers. Frequently they may have had, but this 
could be from that decided, potent, psychical na- QUALITIES TRANSMISSIBLE. 
25 
ture, or mind, which the mother communicates, 
and which plays so distinguished a part in the 
world. But at the same time, that inmost and 
supremest ens which the father communicates, it 
is not hers to give, for this is communicated by 
the seed, which is in the father; and it is for the 
mother only to clothe and organize that germ for 
external action; and this is the reason why, after 
all is said, man is universally recognized as pre- 
dominant in power and influence, in some sense 
to which woman in vain aspires. Yet still, in a 
true order of things, the part which the woman 
contributes to organic life and character is equal 
in importance to that which man communicates, 
only differently placed : and therefore, with a true 
philosophy, there need be no detraction from her 
high prerogatives. We see her unjust oppression ; 
we acknowledge the superiority of her love and 
refinement, and her beautiful and brilliant intel- 
lect ; we know that in a perfectly true union she 
would be the equal of man, as God designed her, 
but no more; and we labor gladly, triumphantly, 
for her elevation. There is a new day for her to 
come. 
But we must not protract this discussion here. 26 
INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL 
We may just state now, as our own modest opin* 
ion, that it is not superior mothers, pre-eminently, 
that we need for the origin of great men, but the 
excellence of both parents, in their united organ- 
isms, temperaments, and influence: for when either 
is lacking, the other is comparatively weak in pro- 
ductive effort. Sometimes it is of the mother, 
sometimes of the father, that illustrious progeny 
proceeds; but the truth unquestionably is, that 
were all operative causes taken into consideration, 
it would be found that nature is uniform in her 
processes, and that neither the one nor the other 
could boast of any predominance other than that 
of an impartial, beautiful order in all that God has 
designed. “ One of the great causes why men of 
talents frequently leave no gifted posterity, is, that 
they form alliances with women of low tempera- 
ment, in whose inert systems their vivacity is ex- 
tinguished ; and, on the other hand, the cause why 
men of genius often descend from fathers in whom 
no trace of ethereal qualities can be discovered, is, 
that these men were the fortunate husbands of 
women of high temperament, and fine cerebral 
combinations, who transmitted these qualities to 
their offspring,” QUALITIES TRANSMISSIBLE. 
27 
Since writing the above, we have received a let- 
ter from a critical friend and admirer of Sweden- 
borg, confirmatory of these views, in answer to a 
question put to him respecting the point in ques- 
tion. His reply is — “ What Swedenborg means 
by the body only being from the mother, I do not 
know, for I am neither his expositor nor apologist: 
but what I should mean is, that the sensual mind, 
as well as the first corporeal substances, are sym- 
pathetically moulded by her during pregnancy and 
in the first age of childhood; but when both pa- 
rents are truly united, they continually so act upon 
each other, that it would be difficult to say which 
most influenced the character. That our best and 
greatest men trace their qualities to their mothers 
is because a mother’s influence is more seen and 
felt; and when her love is reciprocated by the 
child, it cannot fail to develop, nurture, and 
strengthen his- noblest points of character.” 
In the case of any other differences in the same 
family, which the above considerations are insuffi 
cient to account for, there are, doubtless, super- 
natural causes which operate — means and appli- 
ances, I mean, in the spiritual world, by which, 
when a genius of particular character is wanted — 28 
INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL 
a great commander, mathematician, poet, philoso- 
pher, reformer, or some other personage, the angels 
themselves, who are only glorified men and women, 
conspire to operate upon the original germ, and so 
far as the laws reigning will admit, produce the 
character that the world needs. It would be diffi- 
cult to account for the timely and providential ap- 
pearance of certain great leaders — such as meet 
great crises, and affect large periods of history, if 
there are not in operation some such supernatural 
means. Spiritual beings have much more to do 
with births, even ordinary births, and the whole 
pre-natal condition from the moment of conception, 
than we are aware of. They not only arrange, 
when they can, for the suitable parties who shall, 
under providence, become the parents of a partic- 
ular child, but (taking the testimony of the Seers, 
Swedenborg in particular, with our own reason) 
they preside continually over the womb that con- 
tains so precious a treasure, and, by a course of 
direct and subtle operation, they ward off all hos- 
tile influences, and, by nourishment and protection, 
minister to the unborn infant in a thousand un- 
known and secret ways, to prepare it for its future 
mission. In this way, frequently, even all lieredi* QUALITIES TRANSMISSIBLE. 
tary laws seem to be set at defiance, and the great- 
est possible unlikeness between the child and the 
parent is secured by a higher power. 
“ Generation is so holy that there is present a 
direct influx from Almighty God, upon all orderly 
earths, in the celebration of the nuptial mysteries; 
and there is a special series of vortices, by means 
of which these first essences of mankind become 
deposited in their resting-places. The Angels of 
the Ultimate Heaven preside over this, and, when 
the germ becomes ultimated, they are guardians 
each of that child over the descent of whose germ 
they have mediated.”* 
There is undoubtedly an inverted truth con- 
nected also with the miscalled science of Astrol- 
ogy. The groupings of the suns and planets in 
the universe, and the subtle auras emanating from 
them, may be supposed to have some influence 
over the susceptible embryotic life, as we know 
that they do upon the earth’s atmosphere, causing 
many perceptible changes. Speaking of certain 
great and influential men, as of Cromwell, Frederic 
the Great of Prussia, &c., and of particular con- 
vergent influences in the heavens, it is remarked 
* Arcana of Christianity, by T. L. Harris, No. 522. 30 
INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL 
by the author just quoted, that “ when God wills 
to raise up a hero for the deliverance of any people 
of our earth, or for any great transition period, a 
mother is selected, and a father, of suitable organic 
life, and the initiament of the germ into the womb 
is effected when such suns as these are ascendant 
in the centre of influence.” 502. We do not vouch 
for this, neither do we slightly disregard it, being 
well aware that “ there are more things in heaven 
and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.” 
But to leave, for the present, the higher and 
supernatural influences, let us remark here upon 
the thousand influences and conditions of a purely 
natural character, attending both parents through 
the whole continuance of the pro-creative term, 
and particularly the period of gestation. How 
slight a circumstance will change the whole char- 
acter and fortune of the child! The laws of sympa- 
thy, impression, outward cirnumstance and inward 
state—how marvellously they operate ! Bonaparte 
awoke to conscious existence amidst the civil wars 
and commotions of his own native Corsica; and his 
mother, the wife of a military chieftain, was often 
on horseback in the thickest of the strife. It has 
been remarked generally, of the children whose ex- QUALITIES TRANSMISSIBLE. 
31 
istence dated from the horrors of the first French 
Revolution, that “ they turned out to be weak, ner- 
vous, and irritable of mind, extremely susceptible 
of impressions, and liable to be thrown by the least 
extraordinary excitement into absolute insanity.” 
And in common life, in thousands of well-known 
cases, who is not familiar with the influence of 
parental impressions prior to birth, both on the 
physical and mental constitution of the child ? 
Now, here is the law — here is the place, time, 
occasion, which, in connection with other influ- 
ences to be mentioned afterwards, is rife with more 
important consequences to humanity and all true 
reform, than all other causes, frequently, in a 
whole lifetime. Education and regeneration may 
do much after this, but little comparatively with- 
out this, even in their most successful efforts. 
And we shall see, in the sequel, how much regen- 
eration is connected with this. 
Let us look at this a little more in particular. 
We are very apt to say we can do but little here, 
people are so faithless, and so sensual and worldly. 
But the truth is, we do not know what we can do 
till knowledge is made patent and tangible before 
us, and till, considering the desolations and cor- INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL QUALITIES. 
ruptions of humanity through all its relations, we 
begin in some sense to despair of it, and to ask if 
some more radical and effective measures may not 
be instituted for its redemption. Let us, then, if 
possible, venture upon the most radical grounds. 
And let us put off the shoes from our feet, for the 
ground is holy. III. 
FACTS OF TRANSMISSION, AND HOW FAR WE CAN 
CONTROL THEM. 
THE facts on this subject range all the way, 
from the most hopeless idiocy, to the most 
beautiful and marked developments of virtue, in- 
tellect, and human joy. We would that we could 
present a greater array of them, hut our limits, 
and the requirements of the subject, must make 
the following sufficient. By these, the principle 
of all we have to say is permanently and promi- 
nently established. 
For a case of the most melancholy character, 
take that recorded by Dr. Combe, in his “ Consti- 
tution of Man.” — “ The child’s father belonged 
to a regiment then in Ireland. Tie had obtained 
leave of absence to join his relations in England, 
and on the eve of his departure to join his regi- 
ment again, an evening entertainment was given, 
at which the daughter of an elderly woman was 34 
FACTS OF TRANSMISSION, AND 
present, and she and the soldier danced and sang 
together the whole evening. While thus heated 
by the toddy and the dance, they left the cottage, 
and after the lapse of an hour were found together 
in a glen, in a state of utter insensibility, from the 
effects of the former festivity. The consequence 
of this interview was the birth of an idiot. He is 
now [says the narrator] nearly six years of age, 
and his mother does not believe he is able to rec- 
ognize either herself or any other individual. He 
is quite incapable of making signs, whereby his 
wants can be made known — with this exception, 
that when hungry he gives a wild shriek. The 
parents are both intelligent, and the fatal result 
cannot be otherwise accounted for than by the 
almost total prostration or eclipse of the intellect 
of both parties from intoxication.” 
The above case is one from which we may gen- 
eralize. If such is the result of an extreme de- 
basement of both father and mother, what follows 
but that in all the lesser and minute derelictions 
from the law of strict rectitude, — in all those 
nameless variations of the conditions of human life 
and activity, the results to the offspring are none 
the less sure and exact, though we are not able JJOW FAR WE CAN CONTROL THEM. 
35 
to trace them? Does it not show the mighty and 
omnipotent sway of the parentage — of the states 
of the affections, the thoughts, the superinducing 
elements which enter into and form the infant or- 
ganism even at the time of conception ? If this is 
an extreme case, let it speak to us all the more 
powerfully * of how the whole nature — the whole 
soul, may be affected and over-borne by a pre-natal 
condition in the parentage, and this even before 
the quickening of conception in the womb of the 
mother. It is melancholy indeed; but so much do 
humarf beings, with their fearful agency, have to 
do with extinguishing the very first spark of the 
life of God in the soul of man, and dragging down 
all that is heavenly and immortal into hopeless and 
utter darkness. 
On the contrary, what may not an entirely op- 
posite condition effect — those high, saintly, and 
exalted states, such as all should strive after, and 
a feAV attain to, in the inestimable privilege of 
earthly parentage ? What wonders of generation 
may not be effected by compliance with the eter- 
nal and inevitable laws ! “ In conversation on this 
subject with a distinguished Judge,” says 0. S. 
Fowler, in his 1 Love and Parentage/ “ he said he 36 
FACTS OF TRANSMISSION, AND 
employed the principle here involved in regard to 
his youngest child.” That is, like a sensible man, 
he made a practical application of it. u Deter- 
mined, at the end of several sessions, to dismiss 
business, and recreate a while with his family, he 
invited several of his legal and other intimate 
friends to accompany him for the purpose of hav- 
ing a delightful festive occasion. Meanwhile, his 
wife had ordered out the carriage, and came to 
escort him home. All entered, heart and soul, into 
the dance, mirth, and music of the occasion. In 
the exceedingly agreeable frame of the minds of 
its parents thus induced, the child received exist- 
ence and character, [was conceived] and accord- 
ingly, rarely cries, frets, or complains, but will sit 
on the floor for hours together, and amuse herself, 
always appears perfectly happy, and is one of the 
best-natured children in the world.” 
From this we may learn the importance of pro- 
viding every cheerful circumstance — all that can 
destroy melancholy, give buoyancy of spirits and 
suitable elevation of mind to the young being who 
is so soon to be ushered into the world, and whose 
happiness or misery can be largely promoted by a 
wise precaution on the part of the parents, before HOW FAR WE CAN- CONTROL THEM. 
37 
tlie period of conception, at the time of it, and dur- 
ing the whole progress of gestation. It should be 
remembered that it is the period between concep- 
tion and birth, that is the most decisive in regard 
to the natural character of the child, and during 
which more can be done for it than frequently a 
whole education amounts to, in shaping and de- 
fining its earthly destiny. The exceptions, of 
course, are here taken of the providential means 
which are furnished in the ancestry, and in the 
character of the immediate parentage before con- 
ception ; but for shaping, impressing, and moulding 
what is given, the period above denoted is fre- 
quently the most important. It may be made 
much more so. No mere education, after birth, 
can equal what is here effected, and organized 
into our very being. It becomes us, therefore, to 
take due notice of a time so fruitful of conse- 
quences, and conform our action accordingly. 
Another interesting case which may be men- 
tioned, is that of a boy whose parents I am per- 
sonally acquainted with. They had lost a precious 
and favorite child of most remarkable promise, dis- 
tinguished for its beauty and its noble organism, 
its fine brain and temperament, and sweetness of 38 
FACTS OF TRANSMISSION, AND 
disposition. It was the admired of every beholder. 
He died at the age of twenty months. Profoundly 
pained at this instance of bereavement, yet bear- 
ing it with a Christian and philosophic fortitude 
which few could summon, it was now, after two 
years, their hearts’ desire, their religious deter- 
mination, and their systematic effort, to supply the 
breach in the family which this death had occa- 
sioned. Accordingly, they prepaved themselves 
for the purpose, as every parent should. For sev- 
eral weeks previous to conception, with the father 
in particular, who understood this matter, it was 
his thought, his prayer, his noble aspiration, to 
obtain from the Creator a child to replace the one 
they had lost. And by inducing a proper state of 
mind in himself, he thus sought to impregnate the 
germ of a new being. It was the good fortune of 
these parents too, to know of the nearness of the 
angelic world, and the sympathy which the heav- 
enly beings have for the offspring of earth. And 
in the holiest and purest consecration of them- 
selves to the hymeneal act, who shall say that the 
Divinity would not honor it, and crown it with his 
especial blessing ? It was by this process that the 
very seed of the father, and the first germ of life HOW FAR WE CAN CONTROL TEEM. 
39 
in the embryo with the mother, were magnetized 
or spiritualized with a divine force and substance, 
by the predominating affections, thoughts, will, and 
effort of both parents; and through their organism, 
first in the spiritual, and then in the natural or 
material, the vitalizing properties of a new being 
were transmitted and fixed in the original form ! 
Behold the result! Not an angel, for there are no 
angels in this world; but a child of love, not of 
last, was produced ;—an ethereal, beneficent, heav- 
enly principle was conveyed to the mother; — the 
Christ principle; — not as He had it, but as we 
may have it, and by which our households may be 
blessed with angelic natures, and the whole world 
greatly reformed and redeemed. The child so 
born to these parents was remarkable for sweet- 
ness of disposition, for beautiful intellect, for a 
fine, impressible temperament, and this too in a 
family where the other children, born of the same 
parents under different conditions, were distin- 
guished for opposite qualities. The little boy I 
speak of had a decidedly spiritual and intuitive 
turn, and most richly supplied the place of the 
little boy that died. 
Another case of marked character I had related 40 
FACTS OF TRANSMISSION, AND 
to me by a gentleman who received the account 
from a lady who was personally knowing to it. A 
female member, in good standing with a Presbyte- 
rian church in the city of New York, was treas* 
urer of a benevolent society connected with that 
church. During her pregnancy, she was tempted 
to, and did, embezzle a large portion of the funds 
intrusted to her. Her child was born to become a 
thief. Its first manifestations were acquisitiveness 
and secretiveness in marked excess. 
One of this gentleman’s own children too, he 
assured me, to his great grief, had inherited the 
perversions of his mother’s state during pregnancy 
so much, as to grow up to the practice of stealing, 
repeatedly and persistently. None of the other 
children had this peculiarity. But during the ges- 
tation of this child, an unhappy division occurred 
between the husband and wife, which issued in 
separation, and ultimately in divorce; and the 
mother in this time taxed her whole mind to ap- 
propriate as much of the property as she could — 
was consulting lawyers, and using every means to 
obtain an unjust share of it, and the consequence 
was, a thief in the character of her child. And 
ihe father assured me he felt greatly resigned on HOW FAR WE CAN CONTROL THEM. 
41 
account of it, when the little son was removed bj 
death at the age of nine years. 
Take another case of a different character, which 
I heard related not long since by a lecturer in one 
of our cities. A man of great energy and decision 
of character — an engineer and machinist, was em- 
ploying himself most intensely for several months, 
in the construction of a huge steam-engine and 
other apparatus, fitted for a very large experiment 
in the line of water transportation. His whole 
days and evenings were frequently given to con- 
centrated study to perfect the powers adapted to 
propel the mighty vessel, and it was during these 
months that his daughter received her embryotic 
life, and was undergoing the process of gestation, 
doubtless also with the sympathy of the mother 
somewhat in the same work; and the consequence 
was, a female child of huge mathematical and me- 
chanical powers — of great tendency to invent and 
construct — great powers of propulsion — as the 
lecturer expressed it, “a regular steamboat of a 
girl,” who will no doubt take her place in the 
midst of the powers that be, and be of very essen- 
tial service to some cause on the woman’s side of 
the question. 42 
FACTS OF TRANSMISSION, AND 
Take two or three more cases which I find re- 
lated in a little work entitled “ The Empire of the 
Mother,” by Henry C. Wright. One is concerning 
an organic tendency to useful labor. “ D. P. is a 
woman whose experience is instructive. She lives 
but to labor; not for love of gain, but from the 
love of useful action. She never wastes her ener- 
gies in labors that benefit no one ; but they are 
ever directed to something useful. A restless, 
anxious spirit, which she cannot control, is ever 
prompting her to useful and benevolent action, in 
household labors, in out-door exercise, and in ac- 
tions that are beneficial to her neighbors. From 
childhood, the same uncontrollable desire to be 
useful to somebody, has led her onward and gov- 
erned her actions. The cause. From her concep- 
tion to her birth, one irrepressible desire governed 
the activities of her mother. All her energies of 
soul and body were directed to useful ends. She 
was ever on the alert to find opportunities to do 
good to somebody. She literally went about doing 
good, and ever found it1 more blessed to give than 
to receive.’ The same tendencies appeared in her 
child at a very early age. Even as a child, she 
was ever devising some plans that had in view the now FAR WE CAN CONTROL THEM. 
43 
good of others, and had an extraordinary aptitude 
to execute her own benevolent purposes. Hers 
was a rich and glorious inheritance. 
“ The Child Visitor. Another fact, to illustrate 
the power of the mother over the organic condi- 
tions of her child. L. F., ten years old, never can 
rest at home. She is ever running here and there, 
restless as a wild bird in a cage, just from the 
woods. She ever pines to be abroad. Is ever 
teasing her mother to let her go visiting. Knows 
no rest, no enjoyment, except in going from house 
to house, making calls, and getting up parties 
among her mates. Visiting seems to be the one 
overmastering thought and passion of her life. 
Cause. The father was a hard man, a drinking 
man, and the terror of his wife. During her child’s 
entire pre-natal life, to avoid him, the mother was 
abroad, making calls, going from house to house, 
getting up parties, and making visits. Her entire 
waking hours, during that period, were thus spent. 
She saved her child [which was probably her mo- 
tive] from the drunken father’s influence ; but she 
stamped upon it the stamp of a restless visitor, and 
unfitted her for any steady, useful employment. It 
will prove a sad legacy to the child as she passes 44 
FACTS OF TRANSMISSION, AND 
on to womanhood and enters into the natural rei*» 
tions and encounters the stern realities of life as 
a wife, a mother, and actor in the great drama of 
humanity.” 
Once more : “ the following sad incident,” says 
the same atithor, “ occurred in my experience. I 
had lectured in a country town in New England, 
on the pre-natal life and education of man. A 
woman, a mother with her son of three years old, 
called upon me. I was much interested in her 
boy, so 'perfect in its physical organization. The 
child stepped out of the room, attracted by other 
children. To the mother, I said, ‘ What a healthy, 
noble boy you have. One of whom any mother 
might well be proud.’ To my amazement, she, 
bursting into tears, exclaimed, ‘ I long and pray 
for his death ! It would be an infinite relief to me 
to lay that form, so healthy, strong and perfect, 
in the grave.’ ‘Your conduct,’ I replied, ‘seems 
most unnatural and monstrous.’ ‘ I know it must 
seem so to you, sir, still I long to see him draw his 
last breath in childhood, for so surely as he lives, 
he will become a murderer, and meet the murder- 
er’s doom on the gallows.’ ‘ On what do you base 
your unmotherly, unnatural prophecy?’ I asked. HOW FAR WE CAN CONTROL THEM. 
45 
‘ On my own conditions before his birth/ said she ; 
‘from his conception to his birth, I longed and 
labored for his death. I did all I could and dared 
to do, to kill my child without killing myself. My 
heart was filled with the spirit of murder against 
the life of my child. He struggled into life against 
the spirit of murder in the heart of his mother. 
That he was born a living child was my deepest 
anguish, for, too truly, my spirit foreboded what 
he must be, whose pre-natal life and education was 
completed beneath a heart whose every throb was 
a threat of death, and a protest against his exist- 
ence.’ ‘But/ I asked, ‘does his post-natal life thus 
far correspond with your conditions during his 
pre-natal life ? ’ ‘ Oh, too truly, too fatally/ said 
the weeping mother; ‘ I cannot awaken in him the 
least sympathy and consideration for the persons 
of others. He is utterly callous about inflicting' 
wounds and death on others. If his parents, or 
anybody, offend him, he strikes at their faces 
or persons, with whatever sharp or deadly weapon 
he may happen to have, or that lies within his 
reach. I dare not leave him alone with other chil- 
dren, for fear he will kill them. God forgive me ! ’ 
cried the poor mother, ‘ I knew not what I was 46 
FACTS OF TRANSMISSION. 
doing! I knew not that my conditions were being 
stamped on my poor, unconscious, unborn child. ” 
We might recite more cases, but the foregoing 
are enough. Now, what does all this prove ? It 
proves, if any thing is proved, that the first or 
natural birth is quite as important, or may be 
made so, at least so far as this world is concerned, 
and in some respects vastly more important (hav- 
ing connections that run into eternity) than the 
second or spiritual birth, which is made so impera- 
tive in the Christian experience. And it is quite 
as much under our control! IV. 
CONNECTION OF THE NATURAL BIRTH WITH THE 
SPIRITUAL; MARRIAGE, ETC. 
HERE let us be very careful. I would not, 
for any consideration, lessen the importance 
of the new and second birth of the Christian, for I 
hold to it most radically. I see it as a necessity 
grounded in our hereditary nature, and I see also 
its philosophy in a most affecting and humiliating 
spectacle of a fallen and degraded, and divinely 
uplifted humanity. But is it not easier, generally 
speaking, to accomplish this new birth, and when 
accomplished, is it not infinitely superior, in ves- 
sels more cleanly, nobly, and originally prepared, 
than it is in souls shockingly neglected and de- 
based by a natural parentage ? 
Here, I know, a question may arise as to the 
immortality of such souls at all, as only receive a 
natural birth from natural parentage, and do not 
experience the new birth of the Spirit. It is the 48 
CONNECTION OF THE NATURAL BIRTH 
faith of many that only regenerated souls attain to 
immortality. The merely natural life is so utterly 
defiled with selfishness and wickedness, that, if the 
powers of the heavens are not ingrafted on it, it 
may only flourish a while in these earthly domin- 
ions, and, after death, inevitably sink away into 
utter destruction. This, I say, is now the belief 
of many Christians, of various denominations) and 
of some even of the most intellectual and rational 
sects, and is growing among them. And all such 
may ask the question — IIow can it be possible, 
with this view, that the merely natural birth can 
vie at all in importance with the spiritual ? Is not 
the spiritual the only one that is crowned with 
glory and immortality? 
But without committing ourself to this or that 
view of the question thus proposed, it is to be 
observed that our subject can be prosecuted to all 
its practical conclusions without it. For, with or 
without the immortality of the natural soul, it is 
certainly a vast security of the new and spiritual 
birth, to provide vessels of nature so pure and 
noble that they can easily experience it. And 
indeed, may not the subject be pushed to an abso- 
lute certainty, that generation itself may become, WITH THE SPIRITUAL; MARRIAGE, ETC. 
49 
by the power of Christian truth and practice, so 
eminently holy, that the natural birth shall in- 
sure the spiritual — that the power of hereditary 
evil shall become so broken, (if not utterly abol- 
ished, in the far distant future — in the day of 
Messiah’s perfect reign upon earth) that the grace 
of the skies shall descend without obstruction into 
a sufficiently purified natural humanity, and raise 
it, en masse, to the glory of the angelic state, and 
to fellowship with all that is divine, imperishable 
and immortal! This is the faith which assures and 
comforts the writer. Certainly, a purified natural 
soul must invite and attract all spiritual influences, 
and the first and second births may thus become 
so at one — so in harmony from like spiritual 
causes, as to be somewhat identified in their na- 
ture, when a regenerated parent may say, as he 
looks upon his new-born child — Behold, the fruit 
of the womb is holy, for the Spirit of God hath 
sanctified it to me ! 
But more of this in the sequel. No one, cer- 
tainly, can avoid this conclusion without affirming 
an utter disconnection and non-affinity between 
pure natural vessels and the influx of the heavens 
into them. And if any should go to the length of 50 
CONNECTION OF THE NATURAL BIRTH 
this absurdity, then we should posit our argument 
upon those souls who do escape the second death, 
and rise in the regeneration. For though the purity 
of their natural life may have not been the cause, or 
had an}r power in attracting the spiritual influences, 
(but who can suppose such a thing !) yet it cannot 
be said that when those influences enter and oper- 
ate in the soul, they do not connect themselves 
with the natural organism they find there, and that 
it is not all the better for the new life, the better that 
organic foundation is prepared for it. And further 
than this, we should also argue for the practical 
result of an improved humanity in this world — 
should aim a blow at the foundations of all crime, 
impurity, sin and misery, here upon the plane of 
our earth-life alone,—leaving the question of im- 
mortality entirety out of the subject. But I wish 
the reader to understand that we do not shrink up 
into any such needless and diminutive proportions. 
We allow to the subject all its scope—all its grand 
and glorious expansion. 
We renew the question, then — Is it not easier, 
generally speaking, to accomplish this new birth, 
and when accomplished, is it not greatly superior, 
in vessels so cleanly, nobly, and originally pre- WITH THE SPIRITUAL; MARRIAGE, ETC. 
pared ? Let ns do our best, we can only, in the 
present state of the world, make an approximation 
to purity. Human nature will come into the world 
more or less defiled and imbruted. The refine- 
ments of selfishness are too deeply embedded, even 
in the spiritual nature, to be rooted out by one or 
many generations of ever so perfect practice ; and 
therefore, the second birth, with its regenerative 
consequences, will ever be a necessity, through 
struggle and combat, until sin is entirely finished, 
and everlasting righteousness brought in. And 
even then, there is progress from natural to spirit- 
ual, without conflict, for ever and ever. But it is 
precisely to this pitch of human perfection that 
our nature, in “ the restitution of all things,” is to 
be brought; viz., to the end of hereditary evil, — 
when children shall be born into this world with- 
out any bad tendencies — without any malforma- 
tions of soul, brain, or body, and when the whole 
effort of religion and education will only be to 
refine more and more, and spiritualize, enlarge, 
and elevate the nature, freed from all conflict with 
absolute evil. “ The Lord of hosts will destroy in 
this*mountain the face of the covering cast over 
all people, and the veil that is spread over all 52 
CONNECTION OF THE NATURAL BIRTH 
nations. He will swallow up death in victory, and 
the rebuke of his people shall He take away from 
off all the earth." 
I speak not, of course, with regard to time ; 1 
am upon principles now; and I say, the sooner we 
see this — the sooner we understand and practise 
upon the principle of improving the births, and 
this by improving the marriages, and by regu- 
lating scientifically all the duties of marriage, 
(with the other regenerative means to be men- 
tioned afterwards) the better will it be for the 
human race, and the sooner shall we strike at the 
foundations of all discord, of all good and truth, all 
happiness and misery. 
And let none say that nothing, or but little, 
can be done in this respect, — that it is very fine 
theory, but, like many other good and true things, 
has the misfortune of being a thousand years, more 
or less, in advance of the age. No matter if it is 
a million years in advance. It is true! It is 
most primal, radical truth, and lies at the founda- 
tions of all human improvement. I hold up this 
truth. I wish I could devote my life to it. I wish 
that schools could be established, where classes of 
adult men and women, separately or combined, WITH THE. SPIRITUAL; MARRIAGE, ETC. 
53 
could be taught these fundamental truths, and in- 
duced to practise upon them, and to love them 
better than silver and gold. Let the experiment 
be tried. Let only a few, two or three, if no more, 
or a dozen, start out upon these principles, and 
by prayer arid faith and self-denial, see what can 
be done. 
Suppose, for instance, the mother whose melan- 
choly case was last referred to, who \yas instru- 
mental in bringing a child-murderer into the world, 
had pursued an entirely opposite course. Sup- 
pose, instead of seeking continually the death of 
her child, she had been filled with a spirit of ardent 
devotion for the child’s future honor and useful- 
ness. And suppose, for this purpose, she had 
prayed earnestly to God, night and morning, each 
successive day, during the whole time of her preg- 
nancy, that He would so overshadow her with 
his presence, so influence all her affections and 
thoughts, and cause his angels to attend her, as 
that her whole soul might be penetrated with 
heavenly influxes, and that even her unborn babe 
might be made to experience the purifying and 
refining influences which flow continually from 
the sanctuary of the Most High. And suppose, in 54 
CONNECTION OF THE NATURAL BIRTH 
compliance with influences which could not but be 
given to such a state of mind, she had fixed her 
eye upon some noble height of possible attainment 
for her child, associating nothing with it but im- 
ages of purity and beauty, or at least repelling 
every hostile influence or image which might in- 
trude itself, and so dwelt as it were in a glad and 
happy atmosphere, with an imagination, for this 
future being, of continued usefulness, honor, and 
promotion. And in addition to this, suppose she 
had engaged, herself, in acts of beneficence and 
love to others, continually living and practising 
the ennobling virtues and graces which she would 
see inscribed upon the life of her child. Think 
you she would have given birth to a child-mur- 
derer? Forbid it, high and holy Heaven ! Ah, 
how little have we yet conceived of the power 
of the mother over the yet unborn being which 
she is intrusted with at a time so fatal! Surely 
we may say, from what the fact itself warrants us, 
that just the opposite character would have been 
as likely to have been produced, as this young 
monster of cruelty. 
Shall Ave undertake to say, then, that this is an 
impractical subject ? — that nothing, or next to WITH THE SPIRITUAL; MARRIAGE, ETC. 
55 
nothing, can be done with it ? I affirm that noth- 
ing is so effectively and radically practical. If it 
was practical to produce a murderer, it may be 
practical to produce a saint. If it is practical to 
cure, it is practical to prevent. If it is practical 
to reform, it is more practical to form. The truth 
is, men and women are so all-sufficiently selfish 
and lazy that they will not exert themselves even 
according to their best knowledge. And the devil 
has such a hold upon all this world’s institutions, 
especially enthroning himself in the family rela- 
tionship, that money and fashion and pride and 
lust and vanity will yet marry and give in mar- 
riage, while love and the spirit go begging for 
existence. 
Sometimes, nay frequently, we hear men and 
women regretting that they have no worthy and 
laudable object of ambition — nothing commensu- 
rate with their immortal powers. Some will say, 
Oh ! if they could only write a book, and embody 
what they do know, and let that go travelling 
through the world, a silent, powerful instructor. 
That would live when they are dead, and work 
when they are gone. How strange it is that so 
few have ever thought, or so little tried, for the  CONNECTION OF THE NATURAL BIRTH 
production of a work of more living genius — 
a volume more heavenly and practical — whose 
pages should contain the lore of a more active 
intelligence — whose style should be more beauti- 
ful, contents more rich, fame more lasting, than 
that of any volume now in the libraries of the 
world, — nay, which should be absolutely immor- 
tal in its duration and influence ! An ever-fresh 
apocalypse of celestial verities ! The Word itself, 
of the Old and New Testaments, embodied in a 
living organism, beautiful, scientific, pure, of his- 
torical accuracy and scholarly elegance, destined 
to be read by millions upon millions, to act upon 
untold ages, to be made even the companion of 
angels, and to circulate joy and peace and instruc- 
tion forever ! Such are the works which most any 
of us might produce. But instead of this, how we 
grovel in the midst of low romance, and a fictitious, 
perverted life, — the “ books that are books,” and 
the bo}Ts that are boys, being equally scarce in the 
comparison here instituted ! 
But before any thorough and complete improve- 
ments can be effected in this way, some better 
attention must be paid to the subject of Marriage. 
Here is the rock on which the ages are built; here WITH THE SPIRITUAL; MARRIAGE, ETC. 
57 
is the Truth of truths, and the beginning of all 
good. If clergymen would only preach the gospel 
of salvation here, — tell what true marriage is, and 
encourage it to their congregations, — at least en- 
courage the truest approximations to it; — if they 
would, only occasionally, which they might with 
the utmost propriety, unfold the laws of nature, 
which are the laws of God, in the spiritual and 
physical connections of human pairs, they might 
dispense with a large part of their theology; for 
nature itself would become so practical, exact, 
and regular, that the God of nature would work 
through it without obstruction, and the Holy Spirit 
find an almost involuntary entrance. 
But now, what is marriage ? Not any thing m 
the minds of the masses, — not any thing even with 
the churches in general, at all commensurate with 
its mighty magnitude and far-reaching influence. 
Confessedly the most important act for time and 
eternity, yet with how many the subject of mere 
fancy, caprice, and passion! Or worse;—a bargain 
entered into as a man bargains for an estate; — two 
immortals pledging themselves, body, bank-stock, 
houses and lands, and what souls they think of, to 
live together for a lew years, and share the joys 58 
CONNECTION OF THE NA TUBA L BIRTII 
and sorrows of life. The children of this union 
have souls. But the partners never thought of 
that. Theology and the clergy have to do with 
souls; and for all the deformed and suffering speci- 
mens of humanity brought into this world, there is 
the same old perpetual lamentation, and the same 
blindness to all original and fundamental princi- 
ples. 
I own, that in the present state of society, it is 
almost impossible to secure those partners who are 
most fitted by nature to enter into the marriage 
relation with us. It must be more or less of 
chance and circumstance, at the best — save in a 
very few rare instances. And human nature is so 
fallen and degraded, that the absolutely true mar- 
riage— the spiritual union of souls for eternity, is 
scarcely known or thought of. But with all our 
disadvantages and ignorance, we might do vastly 
better than we do. Spiritual congeniality — simi- 
larity of tastes and tendencies, is the law in gen- 
eral ; and if there is no marriage in nature and 
the spirit, there can be none by our law-making, 
only artificial, external, permissive, (but by no 
means to be disregarded) and the fruitful cause of 
discord, sin, and misery. WITH THE SPIRITUAL; MARRIAGE, ETC. 
59 
Even taking the most natural views of mar- 
riage, that is, eschewing the spiritual altogether, 
and looking at natural character alone, and what 
grows from it, how palpable are the facts of 
human life and interest as founded upon the off- 
spring of suitably married partners ! It is safe to 
say, at least, that those children who spring from 
a proper and well-adjusted parentage (say nothing 
about the marked cases of extraordinary genius) 
will be two or three centuries in advance of the 
children of so many hap-hazard, harum-scarum mar- 
riages, in all that constitutes the perfection of civ- 
ilization, and the beauties and conveniences of a 
well-ordered life. And what a waste of effort, and 
useless application of spiritual and theological ma- 
chinery, upon such abortions, and pygmies, and 
crudities, and fag-ends of humanity, compared 
with what might be effected upon God’s nobility 
as first born ! Would that every clergyman could 
have a trumpet put to his mouth, to sound the truth 
with a voice of thunder to his sleepy, dozing, lacka- 
daisical, would-be-spiritual hearers. It is in this 
sense that the modern reformers are right, in de- 
claring, as we have quoted in our preface,that “the 
life and happiness of individuals, the love and har- 60 
CONNECTION OF THE NATURAL BIRTH 
mony of families, the prosperity of states and king- 
doms, and the protection of life, liberty, and per- 
son, are more dependent upon influences that bear 
upon human beings, before birth, than on any influ- 
ence that can be brought to bear on them after- 
wards. What is organized into us, in our pre-natal 
state, is of more consequence to us, and more vital 
to our triumph over the temptations and obstacles 
that impede our progress towards perfection and 
happiness, than what is educated into us after we 
are born.” The truth cannot be too often re- 
peated. As to all the natural interests of human- 
ity, the concerns of this world, moral and temporal 
prosperity, it is all true without qualification. But 
as there is a spiritual nature within this, and a 
cleansing operation to go on from above, and a 
possibility of ruin and loss to the soul too great 
to be estimated, unless we experience that pro- 
cess, there is much to be said of the evils, sins, and 
liabilities of our poor nature, and of the supernat- 
ural system that so surrounds and interpenetrates 
the natural as to cast up before us another and a 
different view of our dependences and destiny. 
And this we propose to glance at as we proceed. 
Here I will only say, that the time is coming—■ WITH THE SPIRITUAL; MARRIAGE, ETC. 
61 
should be realized now in a measure — when not 
only a proper regard to the natural character, soul 
and body, will be observed in the selection of part- 
ners for marriage, but when none but more or 
less regenerate persons, or persons seriously de- 
termined upon that end, will think of entering the 
marriage state together, on account of the evils of 
one or the other, so disastrous to the offspring 
of such a union. But of this no more at present. 
With a true philosophy of the relation of the 
sexes, we come at once to the foundations of all 
that is high and noble in humanity. We can do 
nothing thoroughly without it. But to expand 
upon this subject as a thorough exposition of its 
nature would require, would be to double the size 
of our little volume. And besides, the very heights 
and refinements of the subject, to which we should 
be obliged to carry it, would meet many unpre- 
pared minds to whom the present treatise will be 
more welcome and profitable as it is.* It must 
suffice to say, then, that although, in this life, we 
may not, from the very confusedness and difficul- 
ties of our worldly condition, come into the enjoy- 
* See, however, for a full exposition of this subject, the author’s work 
entitled “ God in his Providence.” 62 
CONNECTION OF THE NATURAL BIRTH 
rnent of that perfect union which the Creator of 
souls has yet in reserve for us, yet, with a knowl- 
edge of what that union is, we should be likely to 
come much nearer to it than we now do. At pre - 
Ont, the young and unmarried have in general 
nothing to guide them but the suggestions of na- 
ture, and the dissolution of the holiest of all ties at 
death. Let them only know that there is a mar- 
riage of the spirit — that, in perfect consistency 
with the Saviour’s announcement of the absence 
of all marriage in heaven, eternity does recognize 
an indissoluble union of male and female souls, 
analogous to the marriage of Love and Wisdom in 
the Divine Mind ; and then, though in a confused 
human society they could not approach the holy of 
holies itself, and it would not be even desirable 
to, unless both parties were equally or suitably 
prepared, they would not blunder, as they now do, 
in the most indiscriminate connections — tyings- 
together, not marriages, with the most horrible 
consequences to the body and the soul, and the 
souls of unborn millions. 
But we cannot amplify upon this subject here, 
only to say, how are parents accountable for the WITH THE SPIRITUAL; MARRIAGE, ETC. 
encouragements and sanctions they give to their 
children’s matrimonial alliances ! And what incon- 
sistencies are they guilty of! These same parents 
will frequently send over a whole country, and 
into other countries too, to procure good seed 
corn, fruit grafts, and other seed, to replenish and 
enrich their granaries and orchards, while they 
will encourage the most pitiful and indiscriminate 
marriage of their children; thus producing a har- 
vest of discord extending indefinitely beyond the 
bounds of time. What they will do for a potato- 
patch, or a field of corn, they will not do for their 
own eternal sons and daughters ! And if we en- 
force this law of human generation by going into 
particulars and details, or if we bring it into the 
pulpit, we are accused sometimes of a disregard 
to delicacy and custom. It is more delicate to 
grovel in the mire of sensuality and say nothing 
about it. Yet I know not why an earnest and 
pure-minded man may not delicately touch upon 
these foundations of life, even to the unfolding of 
many particulars not at all unbecoming the dignity 
of the pulpit, and the dispensing of much saving 
wisdom. The simple truth is, with purity and 64 
MARRIAGE, ETC. 
knowledge and faith in our own hearts, we can 
say many things, which, without these requisites, 
we should neither find grace to say, nor ability in 
the hearer to receive. y. 
POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES OF HUMAN 
PERFECTION, AS BASED UPON THE LAW OF 
HEREDITARY DESCENT. 
LEAVING the subject of Marriage, for the 
present, let us proceed to speak of the high 
possibilities of human perfection under the right 
observance of its laws and conditions. And here 
comes up the old question of times and seasons. 
Christians have much to say on the time of one’s 
conversion, — even the hour, the day, or the year, 
when such a one received salvation. And no 
doubt, there are times and seasons when many 
persons become peculiarly impressed — when the 
spiritual nature is aroused, and a true and genuine 
conversion, that is, turning-point, is realized in the 
soul’s experience. Sometimes this matter is de- 
ferred to the last of one’s life, and even to a death- 
bed repentance. And some may be disposed now 66 
POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 
to inquire, in consistency with the principles here 
unfolded, What is the time — the most hopeful and 
important time for a man’s whole life, and eter- 
nity ? And in reply I say, all times and seasons, 
for a result of such magnitude — such as can be 
crowded into a few days or months — more espe- 
cially, intensified and fatal hours, and moments, 
are altogether out of the question. All seasons 
are important with God, and all have infinite con- 
nections, with man. Sometimes the crisis of a 
man’s salvation, humanly speaking, may turn on 
one thing, sometimes on another. It is not for us 
always to say. With God, the whole of eternity is 
as one hour, or one moment, in which every thing 
for man is infallibly done, and done in the very 
best manner. Stand off! — all meddlers with theo- 
logical machinery. But as the world is so much 
given to meddling, and persons will seek for times 
and seasons ; and as there are, frequently, impor- 
tant crises in our destiny, turning-points, and deci- 
sive periods, let us say here, that were all other 
things equal, — the conditions below and the pow- 
ers above, — and were nature itself in its true and 
perfect order, — the first birth of man would be 
invariably the most important crisis to him, even OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 
67 
in his spiritual course ; especially when we take 
into view the marriages entered into, and the all- 
comprehending substance and qualities of charac- 
ter which are here so largely secured. If one had 
power and wisdom to regulate the marriages of 
the world, he might, I had almost said, dispense 
with all the theology of the world. But no, we say 
no such thing. We only see this one thing loom 
up into overshadowing importance. Let us rather 
say, theology would then come as a blessed bride 
from the skies, purified and transparent with celes- 
tial harmonies. 
But inasmuch as this first birth is now so over- 
clouded with evil; that is, the natural mind is 
so full of hereditary corruption, with so much 
discord in the spiritual and physical organism ; and 
the good traits which we receive from our parent- 
age are so liable to be overborne and crushed 
down with this evil, the spiritual which might 
operate from very infancy is not sufficient, in itself, 
in all cases, to be what is called the leading 
crisis to a sure and steady progress in the re- 
generate life. But I have no hesitation in saying 
that the time is coming — the possibility is in the 
race, of just this truth — if there are not some 68 
POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 
who realize it now. (More of this in the sequel.) 
Children sanctified and saved from birth ! lias it 
not long been cherished as a delightful thought in 
the Christian church? Let us, then, approach this 
subject somewhat from the prospective. And I 
say, if the salvation here spoken of is to be viewed 
in the most extensive sense, as connected with 
what goes before as well as with what follows,— 
with the natural, as purified and coalescing with 
the spiritual, — if it can be viewed in connection 
with the whole man, his whole genius, amplitude, 
and variety of moral and intellectual character; 
and if we may speak of what may be, rather than 
what is, and what the true order of his life should 
justify us in expecting; then I say, the time most 
spiritually dear to him may be the moment of 
conception, and the period before birth. For then 
is determined the very ground and organism of 
humanity — its distinctive form and fashion — its 
expansion or littleness — its majesty or abase- 
ment, as the plane of operations for the new and 
second birth of the Spirit. I do not mean to say 
that more can be done then for the glory and ex 
altation of character than can be done in all time 
after, but that this may be the crisis period — the OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 
69 
few months of greatest consequence. And, sepa- 
rating the subject entirely from the consideration 
of mere natural character — for there can be no 
doubt about the time here mentioned for that — 
and viewing it solely with reference to salvation 
in eternity, deliverance from the second death — 
whatever that may be ; I say, here, in the sancti- 
ties of this sacred crisis, may be the causal poten- 
cies, in connection with other divine means, for a 
certain and everlasting security. 
But alas ! we know it is not so now, just be- 
cause of the prevalence and extent of hereditary 
evil. We only point a hopeful finger to the future. 
It is well to see and realize the high possibilities 
of our nature. It is encouraging to all high en- 
deavor. The prophet should always be before his 
time. The time is coming, undoubtedly, when all 
will be secured to eternal salvation by the inher- 
ited grace of childhood at nativity. The power of 
hereditary evil is to become just so broken by 
Messiah’s reign. And if we are looking already 
too much to that future — to the prospective glory 
of the race, we may be pardoned, at least, for ap- 
pearing a little too much in a hurry, while the 
great truth we are here laboring at is gradually 70 
POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 
developed and illustrated in all its supreme and 
fundamental importance. At all events, the reader 
will follow me on to further and more comprehen- 
sive details, and to the final conclusion of the 
whole matter. 
I overlook not here the original germ-soul which 
came forth from the Creator, and which, long pre- 
vious to its incarnation in the flesh, was distin- 
guished for its specific character, and designed to 
act a particular part in the world. Earthly pa- 
rents do not create souls, but the germs are passed 
through and modified by them. Statesmen, Philos- 
ophers, Poets, Artists, Geniuses of every grade and 
character, with every individual soul of man, must 
be contemplated as pre-fashioned and pre-impressed 
with a distinctive form and tendency, which nat- 
ural birth cannot wholly overpower, and which, at 
some time or other, after all the ravages and de- 
formities of evil, must shine forth in them in all 
their predestined glory and brightness. (Though 
some may have to pass through the awful expe- 
rience of the second death.) But still, this must 
not blind us to the truth of how much natural gen- 
eration accomplishes, even in this specific purpose 
of the Creator. What He has designed He accom- OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 
71 
plishes by certain means. And natural generation 
is a part of these means. Our agency co-operates 
with his agency. And here, in a pre-eminent de- 
gree, I say, is the proximate ground and organic 
foundation of humanity. Here is the natural and 
ultimate plane for the operations of the Divine 
Spirit in the regeneration. And how much we 
may alter that, or interfere with it, by our observ- 
ance or non-observance of the pre-natal laws — 
that is the very question. Every one can see how 
great is our agency in the production of some 
marked and occasional specimens of humanity, 
and bow strong is the tendency to follow out the 
original bent of genius or disposition, be it good 
or evil, mighty or imbecile. There is a certain 
amount of fate in it. That is to say, a Socrates 
cannot convert himself into a Nero, nor a Newton 
into a fool. And the proportions hold with all 
human beings. We may even say, with the excep- 
tions and qualifications soon to be pointed out — 
for no truth is more conspicuous — that there is 
more of character, more of virtue, more of influ- 
ence and power, more of every thing which goes 
to constitute the greatness and grandeur of this 
world, dependent upon what a man may receive in 72 
POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 
his pre-natal conditions, than all that education or 
the Spirit of God can frequently do for him in a 
whole lifetime. If you do not believe this, look 
around you. Who are our most influential men, 
our most eloquent men, our great writers, teach- 
ers, statesmen, philosophers, poets, and divines ? 
They are men, chiefly, who have been born so, and 
for whom education and regeneration had a deep 
and splendid ground prepared for them in the or- 
ganism of the infant. And all the little runts of 
humanity — men of no force, no talent, no promi- 
nent importance in the community, cumberers of 
the ground frequently — whence and how came 
they? Let nature in her powerful laboratories 
answer. 
But it is to be distinctly understood here, that 
when we speak of the character or quality given 
to the soul at birth, we invariably include all that 
which has been accumulated by the education, 
training, regeneration, and all the discipline of 
the parentage and ancestry, and transmitted to the 
offspring. For if we do not bear this continually 
in mind, we shall be in danger of ascribing too 
much to the mere natural character, and not 
enough to the more spiritual activities of the life OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 
73 
itself. Personal discipline and experience is in- 
deed a vast and solemn matter. We can hardly 
overstate its importance; but what I wish to press 
upon the reader’s attention is, how all this runs 
into the natural constitution of the children who 
are born from out its influences. There are two 
ways of speaking of this subject, viz., individually, 
and collectively or in the race. Individually, it is 
undoubtedly true that the soul frequently receives 
more of all that, which gives it character and influ- 
ence, and insures its safety in after-life, from its 
natural parentage — from what is organized into 
it, (and other influences soon to be mentioned) 
than it does from all the influences of education, 
or all training and discipline afterwards. There 
are many exceptions. Education and discipline 
undoubtedly do more for some, who are fortunate 
enough to receive it, than their natural characters 
do. Many that would be nothing, or in great ob- 
scurity, without an education, arrive to eminence 
with one. But allowing for all the exceptions, ard 
considering too that the best native qualities can 
be educated, as well as the poorest, we must cer- 
tainly allow the marked force and impetus of the 
original character, and the sure success with which 74 
POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 
it marches on against all obstacles, which no mere 
education could ever fit one to do without it. And 
sometimes in spite of the grossest lack of educa- 
tion. And how often too will it secure of itself 
an education, which the inheritance of mere medi- 
ocre powers will fail to do. Granting, then, the 
force of this original character in the individual, 
still, in the race, (and frequently of course in the 
individual) the effect of education and regenera- 
tion must be allowed to be pre-eminent. For with- 
out this training and discipline of mankind collec- 
tively, we could not have these high and improved 
results at birth. This is one way in which human 
improvement is held and secured in the race, with- 
out which, each individual, as to his native capa- 
city, would be as though no one had lived before 
him. The whole education and culture of man- 
kind is, in fact, in a constitutional way, rolled into 
the substance and organism of the soul at birth, 
each generation becoming more refined and per- 
fect from what has preceded it. This, of course, 
when no counteracting and adverse influences 
have operated to obstruct it. And in this view, 
education assumes an importance, irrespective of 
its more immediate effects upon the individual life, OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 
75 
which is grand and conspicuous in the cause of 
the elevation and advancement of mankind. There 
is, in fact, a continued circle of mighty and recip- 
rocal influence. Generation and regeneration, na- 
tive character and highest culture, become rolled 
into each other, with every advancing wave of hu- 
manity. This is what we would have the ..reader 
bear in mind whenever we speak of original and 
native character. This is the importance we 
would attach to education, and this also is the 
meaning we would give to natural endowments. 
And while, in the individual, his native and origi- 
nal constitution is so frequently the prominent 
thing which carries him to fortune and success, or 
to degradation and ruin, and which cannot be fully 
outgrown or overpowered by the most assiduous 
efforts afterwards, (in this world at least) yet, in 
the race, sometimes in the course of a few genera- 
tions, education, discipline, and regeneration can 
overpower it—can change and perfect the whole 
organism, and insure to us a humanity, even from 
the mother’s womb, of a pure, and beautiful, and 
heavenly origin. And the individual cases of a 
highly operative Christianity in the course of a 
single life are of course included. 76 
POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 
We do not, then, commit the error that some ol 
our modern reformers are prone to, when they 
ascribe to the mere natural birth more importance 
than they do to the spiritual, and more than all 
other influences put together, in all time. When 
they make such assertions, which they do upon 
the conspicuous facts of great talents, genius, and 
moral power, communicated at nativity, they do 
not consider the possibility of the loss of all this — 
for a long period in eternity at least — from 
the tremendous overbearing surge of evil which 
makes such headway in all of us. They do not 
consider, neither do they understand, the neces- 
sity of spiritualization and cleansing by the spe- 
cific application of a divine power, and the gifts, 
for this purpose, of holy anointing and outpour- 
ing from above. It is in the exercise of this 
power that so many eminently wicked men and 
women are sometimes visited by miraculous grace, 
and from some tender and susceptible qualities in 
their own sin-incrusted spirits, start out afresh, 
and rise in the new life, and make rapid strides in 
glory, far out-distancing many others in the race, 
who have received better natural organizations, 
and, according to all we have said, might be ex- OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 
77 
pected to start first, and keep in the advance col- 
umns. These are the exceptions to what we take 
* 
for the general method. These are the special tro- 
phies of divine grace, showing how great are the 
supernatural powers above us, and how they can, 
when God chooses, overpower the more common 
and regular course of law, and assert the new life 
with supreme control. Though of course there is 
some law in all of it, and an unseen philosophy for- 
ever. And we should say that, all other things be- 
ing equal, those who receive the best natural 
organisms at birth, the largest amount of heredi- 
tary good, were invariably most likely to experi- 
ence the assistance from above. We, however, 
expect more of these apparently exceptional in- 
stances. We know not why we may not look for a 
special dispensation, more marked than usual, to 
the suffering and the needy, the poor and lowly, 
in the great day of God’s power, in the crisis 
which seems so near at hand. Let God select, 
whenever He can, and thus abase the pride of 
man. 
Now, in all such cases, and in fact in any case 
of spiritual salvation where, otherwise, ruin for 
ages in eternity might have occurred, what avails 78 
POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 
it to inherit splendid natural organisms, and 
mighty talents and genius, only to make the ruin 
more conspicuous? Which, under these circum- 
stances, is the most important — the natural birth, 
or the new birth of the Spirit? What doth it 
profit a man, to gain the whole world, whether in 
wealth or talents, and lose his own soul? 
Be it observed, too, that the very way to secure 
these good natural births — these noble inherited 
organisms, is to educate and regenerate the human 
race a/ter birth. Wiiat folly is it, to talk so much 
of a mere birth and beginning—a solid, splendid 
foundation of natural character, and to magnify 
this as more important than all other influences 
that can be brought to bear upon it afterwards, 
when this very character is so largely the fruit 
and consequence of all this stir, and activity, and 
exertion in the human race, assisted from the 
skies, which, generation after generation, becomes 
rolled into the substance and organism of man at 
his nativity! u A good first birth is the main 
thing” — say these reformers. Yes, but how does 
this come about? By ages on ages of regenera- 
tion and improvement in the race after birth ! 
But if rightly considered as the most important OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 
79 
starting-place, as the crisis which may be made 
spiritual and clean, as the foundation of God in 
the human soul for all the after glories and graces 
which lie may ingraft upon it, and which may 
become so pure as to secure eternal salvation from 
the very beginning, then it is an important thing 
indeed. Then there is no birth which can come 
after, of which it can be said, it is any more impor- 
tant. Both, then, become rolled as two spiritual 
crises into one, — one grand and superb character, 
all of God and his Holy Spirit,— the divinity and 
nature meeting and blending in human unison. 
Such will be the music of the age to come. Such 
indeed we may commence and approximate now. 
This is what I would make prominent; and it is 
for this purpose, and to show the control we have 
over this human crisis, that this little volume is 
sent out into the world. 
Much may indeed be done for this first and nat- 
ural birth at any time, without waiting for the 
future. Much may be done now, and always, to 
secure the best natural characters. But the chief 
of this is by a more proper attention being given 
to the marriages of mankind, and by states of 
preparation before conception, and during the POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 
whole process of gestation. Of these we shal) 
speak more largely in the sequel. All the rest is 
from regeneration and improvement before and 
after birth, in the race, and in the individual. 
Another distinction may be noticed here. We 
allude now to those unconscious influences which 
come to the very young infant, both by influx 
from heaven, and from parents, nurses, and all its 
surroundings. The truth is, if the child had no 
education at all, but was left in utter neglect, it 
would grow up little better than a wild animal. 
Its hereditary evils are so great that they would 
be likely to overpower the good which was of 
nature only, and produce a growth of passion and 
depravity scarcely human. God has provided 
against this by ordering the pure influxes of 
heaven to flow into the new-born being, so that it 
is not in poetic phrase only, but a sober, literal 
truth, that “ heaven lies about us in our infancy,” 
in a special and most intimate manner. The 
hereditary evils not yet being active in the infant, 
“ their angels,” who u always behold the face of 
the Father in heaven,” can draw very near to 
them in their state of innocence, and infuse into 
them an abundant measure of the pure, celestial OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 
81 
influences. And what they receive in this way, 
and from the kind attentions and loving caresses 
of parents and nurses, is of immense service to 
their future character, without which the mere 
natural endowments they receive at birth would 
not preserve them from downfall and ruin. It is 
these remains of things celestial, not only of first 
infancy, but of after-childhood, which secure to 
them a successful foundation for their spiritual 
regeneration. 
Then again there is the possibility of what can 
be done by a thorough and systematic work of ed 
ucation and regeneration from the very beginning. 
It is impossible to say how great the triumph would 
be over the worst and most hopeless cases, by 
beginning very early, in a more patient and perse- 
vering way than has ever been done yet, and con- 
tinuing with unabated vigor. Whether the most 
malformed and perverted organisms could be en- 
tirely overcome as to their prominent defects, and 
the children reared in at least passable and respect- 
able virtue and intelligence — this is the question. 
We know that under the present general system 
they are not, but are generally doomed to infamy 
and ruin. What might be done is a very powerful POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 
question. We do not believe that every tiling can 
be done that some people imagine, but we are 
quite ready to allow the most favorable construc- 
tion of this theory, and to accord to such educa- 
tion all that can possibly be claimed for it. The 
case of Fenelon with the Duke of Burgundy is an 
example of what may be effected in later life. The 
young Prince, being heir apparent to the Kingdom 
of France, had the most assiduous training be- 
stowed upon him by this excellent man of the 
church, and with the most signal and triumphant 
success. The Prince was a very hard and difficult 
case to manage. In his earliest youth, as history 
says of him, he showed symptoms of character suf- 
ficient to excite the deepest fears. He was natu- 
rally cruel, ferocious, inordinately proud, unfeeling 
and irritable, exhibiting his spite even towards in- 
animate objects. To his own brothers he felt no 
common fraternal bond of attachment, while he ac- 
counted mankind in general as mere atoms, not 
united to him by any resemblance. But by the 
thorough and persistent efforts of Fenelon, he was 
transformed to a mild, amiable, humane, and mod- 
est person, the subject of admiration to the whole 
nation. Other instances of even more marked OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 
83 
transformation might perhaps be given. So that 
mere natural character, produced by birth and or- 
ganization, must not be allowed to overpower our 
perceptions of what a mighty and well-ordered 
discipline can effect upon it; and it is not from 
any disposition to disparage the latter that we 
seek to make the former so prominent. Were we 
writing a treatise on Education, we should give to 
that subject all the prominence it deserves. But 
surely we need not suffer our eyes to be diverted 
from the important truths of the pre-natal condi- 
tions, and causes too that we can control before 
birth, by any admissions of the power and effect- 
iveness of post-natal instrumentalities. 
Offsetting the above case of successful educa- 
tion, we may here adduce an example of an oppo- 
site character. A family in which the authoress of 
the work before mentioned* was extremely inti- 
mate, affords the following instance. “ The father 
was a man of talent, but had, until the age of forty, 
made pleasure his pursuit, and lived only for him- 
self. At that period, having inherited a fine estate 
which he wished to transmit to his posterity, he 
reformed and married. 
* Intellectual and Moral Qualities Transmissible. 84 
POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 
“Although a highly educated man, Mr. A 
appeared to possess no knowledge whatever of the 
conditions necessary to be fulfilled, in order to in- 
sure a healthy and strong-minded progeny; and 
was guided in his choice more by the animal pro- 
pensities and selfish sentiments, than by enlight- 
ened intellect. ITis dissipated life, having brought 
him in contact with women of loose morals, had in- 
duced a mistrust of those who live much in society; 
he, therefore, chose what he termed 1 an unsophisti- 
cated child of nature ; ’ but in fact, an immature, 
half-educated girl of sixteen. Immediately after 
his marriage he retired to his.estate, remotely sit- 
uated, the neighborhood of which contained very 
few inhabitants with whom his refined and culti- 
vated taste could assimilate. His active tempera- 
ment and versatility of talent, however, found suf- 
ficient excitement in improving his newly acquired 
property, in frequent excursions to the metropolis, 
and in anticipating the birth of an heir whom his 
ardent imagination invested with the beauty and 
grace of its mother, and the talents and enthusi- 
asm of its father; to whose dawning intellect lie 
proposed devoting his leisure hours, his scholastic 
lore, and his knowledge of the world. OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 
85 
“ But alas! all those bright anticipations were 
doomed to bitter disappointment. For his youth- 
ful wife, having few tastes and pursuits in common 
with her husband, was necessarily left much alone; 
her mental faculties being little exercised, her 
physical system immature, the brain of her child 
was imperfectly developed, and his s}rstem weakly 
organized; hence the efforts of his father to be- 
stow a liberal education were fruitless ; and after 
years of anxiety, vexation, and mortification, the 
unhappy father was constrained to admit the men- 
tal imbecility of his son.” 
How evident it is, therefore, that there must be 
something to educate, both in moral as in intellect- 
ual culture, or all our efforts must be fruitless. 
We cannot make brains, nor manufacture spirit, 
very extensively, after the child is born. We can, 
however, to a certain extent, and we can turn what 
we have into more or less of heavenly order. And 
while we are disposed to allow the largest influ- 
ence and the most miraculous and heaven-aiding 
success to- the cases like Fenelon with the young 
Prince, and many others which might be produced, 
yet we must never forget that God required even 
the Messiah himself to be begotten, not of the flesh 86 
POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 
— not to descend from any earthly lineage on the 
jather’s side, for this would have so entailed the 
evils of many generations upon the inmost soul of 
the Son of God, that they never could have been 
expelled, even by divine power, so as to have glo- 
rified the whole humanity, (different from any mere 
human being) and presented the Divine Man to an 
adoring world.* 
And in reference to all these human cases, there 
is one thing we wish to keep specially prominent 
here; and that is, that notwithstanding all the 
heavenly influences upon infancy and childhood,— 
the unconscious and powerful moulding of the 
character in this tender and susceptible state,— 
and notwithstanding all that education does mani- 
festly do, and the wonders besides that it might do 
— heaven only knows how great, — yet still, the 
best of these natural organisms are as capable of 
all this as the poorest: and if so much can be 
done with the poorest, how much more can be done 
with the best! — showing, after all is said, the pri- 
mary importance of securing good native and ori- 
ginal constitutions for the groundwork of all that 
* See, for a full illustration of this Christian doctrine, the author’d 
work — “ Compendium and Life of Swedenborg,” Section 4th, pp. 25-53. OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 
87 
can be built upon them. And who would not 
rather build upon splendid and magnificent organ- 
isms— the foundations of God in a clean, pure, 
ample, harmonious natural humanity, than upon 
souls crushed and mutilated from birth, full of all 
manner of obstruction ? Nay, would not heaven 
itself, generally speaking, look down with more 
complacency upon such souls, and open more fully 
into them from infancy? Let us be careful, theD, 
in our estimate of the comparative importance of 
native and acquired abilities, that we do not at- 
tribute undue influence to either. With these ex- 
ceptions and qualifications, we trust we may now 
go on without danger of error, with the main sub- 
ject under consideration. 
And be it observed again here, that we do not 
forget the distinction between what the original 
germ-soul was in its emanation from the eternal 
divine essence, in its passage through the heavens, 
and what it has acquired from the natural parent- 
age and the orderly or disorderly observance of the 
laws of generation. The differences which we see, 
after all educational and regenerative influences 
are deducted, are not, all of them, the consequences 
of pre-natal conditions in the immediate parent* 88 
POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 
age, nor the remote ancestry. Human souls dif- 
fered in their germs and first beginnings from all 
past eternity — if we may use the word eternity 
in regard to them. (I wish I could give the testi- 
mony of the Seers here, but it would not meet the 
purposes of this treatise.) They differed—they 
must have differed, in their first emanations from 
the Divinity. The soul of a Shakspeare, it would 
seem, must have had something more in it than 
that of an ordinary or inferior person, in its first 
emergement from the infinite Essence. And yet, 
when we see how the abuse of nature’s laws even 
in the immediate parentage, can quench all the light 
and glory of the spirit, and turn God’s image into 
a shattered, vacant, melancholy idiot, let us not be 
too ready to assign any limits to the influence of 
good pre-natal observances on the part of the im- 
mediate parentage. I say, we know not how great, 
or how far-reaching, is our agency here, nor the 
tremendous responsibility that rests upon our act 
of begetting a new being. When we think of the 
marriages too, that we have in our power to regu- 
late ! What masses of filth — what reeking, rot- 
ting humanity, born from mere lust of the animal 
nature, in the sties and pens and cellars — OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 
89 
heaven forgive me ! — for I might as well say — 
opulent and princely chambers of our great cities ! 
What can we do for all these people? What can we 
educate or train them to be ? Much, by the work 
of the philanthropist. Great improvements indeed, 
by faithful missionary labor. And especially if we 
could take them from infancy, which, alas! for the 
most part we cannot. But we might as well im- 
agine the scene changed. Imagine all this sad 
and sorrowful humanity — this heritage of filth, to 
be the clean and orderly offspring of a sanctified 
and holy marriage, and the best production of a 
systematic obedience to the pre-natal laws and 
conditions. How would education, and Christiani- 
ty, and every heavenly influence come as it were 
voluntarily to its own, seeking by a happy affinity 
to lift its subjects to the skies ! Instead of an 
effort to force the healing and blessed influences 
upon them, it would rather require an effort to 
prevent them; for as genius will tend to the devel- 
opment and manifestation of its own peculiarities, 
so will moral and spiritual proclivities arise with 
an inherent force, and seek the corresponding 
qualities of their own native Fountain. 
But it is impossible to conceive how human 90 
POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 
beings of the very lowest order — the worst and 
most imbruted of men, born like swine in the pest- 
houses of wickedness, can arise by any process, 
natural or supernatural, to the supremest heights 
of virtue and perfection. And yet they should be 
able to do so, to constitute with full force an argu- 
ment against our main position. What will not 
apply in an extreme case will not apply in any. 
The slightest influences must be the same, in pro- 
portion, as the greatest, and vice versd. See, then, 
the result. A man or a woman born so, unless 
very happily educated and cared for, must to a 
great degree live so. They may be converted 
and saved, but the most likely thing is, that they 
will die as they were born, mere sensualists, cor- 
rupters and corrupting. Even granting that the 
most unfavorably born could, by any appliances, 
be turned to a decidedly Christian and honorable 
course, as some of them are, yet certain it is they 
must remain comparatively low in the scale of per- 
fection, and the law extends even into eternity. 
An idiot born certainly does not bloom out into a 
Shakspeare, or a Bacon, immediately after death; 
and we should think not for a long time after. 
And the same law holds in morals, and in propor- OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 
91 
tion, with every one. Great things may be ac- 
complished, undoubtedly,—marvellous transforma- 
tions may take place in the spiritual world, when 
all obstructions of the flesh, of materiality, and 
surrounding circumstances are removed from the 
soul; and many that are here idiotic and inferior 
may expand there, by time and culture, into won- 
derful amplitude and beauty. But is it not gen- 
erally recognized that what is first implanted and 
first shaped, by conception and birth into this nat- 
ural world, remains so to a certain degree forever? 
The same as the effect of a mail’s whole lifetime 
here — his experience as a moral agent and actor, 
stamps him morally for the life beyond the grave. 
There are born poets, and born mathematicians, 
and mighty intellects of various character. It is 
rational to suppose that they preserve their dis- 
tinctiveness— that is to say — they do not drop 
into fools and pygmies by passing into the spiritual 
world. If it is true in intellect, in any one depart- 
ment of intellect, it is true in morals. A good 
seed, a good germ; it is impossible, without gross 
blundering, to raise a bad stock out of it. And so 
it is impossible, with an injured or inferior seed, to 
raise a fair and full production. It is true in our 92 
POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 
wheat-fields and orchards; it is equally true with 
our children. 
Now therefore I say, although a man may be 
converted and saved, (whatever theory of salva- 
tion any one may adopt) who has received his 
earthly existence under the very worst conditions 
and circumstances, and that may be therefore to 
him the most important and hopeful period of his 
life, yet if this same man had been born morally 
as our great intellectual geniuses are intellectu- 
ally, or if the utmost possible perfection had been 
secured to his native organism by careful observ- 
ance of the pre-natal laws, he might have been so 
much in advance of his position and attainments at 
any given time, as to cast in the shade all that he 
could then have gloried in. And what shall I say 
further? — that it would have been impossible that 
he should ever have gone the downward course ? 
I will say, that for all you or I know about it; it 
would have been. Nay, that nothing is more 
rational than that it should have been. Could 
Shakspeare have p)Ossibly been a fool, or a block- 
head, with that splendid native endowment? 
Could Bacon have possibly led an obscure life, 
once born as he was? Could Franklin have possi- OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 
93 
My been a weak and drivelling character, with 
that magnificent brain? He needed an education. 
But such characters find for themselves an educa- 
tion. Could Swedenborg have possibly been a 
murderer or a villain? Could Washington, How- 
ard, Melancthou, Fenelon, and a host of others, 
have possibly been among the ruffians and outcasts 
of humanity, after the splendid endowments of 
their first birth? My answer is, that the Provi- 
dence which required the peculiar mission of 
these men, required a definite, original organism 
at birth, as well as education and training after- 
wards. I know not what certain nice metaphysi- 
cal casuists may say against this presentation, but 
I say, after making all allowances for a certain, un- 
mistakable, practical freedom of the will, I am 
compelled to recognize a Destiny among men — a 
destiny in every thing. There is not a sparrow 
that falls to the ground, not a single motion of the 
obscurest human mind, not a particle of flying 
dust, not the least step, or movement, or exertion 
of any kind put forth, but is just as much under 
law and sovereign destiny, as the rolling of the 
planets, or the rising and falling of the tides. 
Freedom is practical and rational, but not absolute 94 
POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 
in the sense of entire origination of any act of the 
mind. Every thing has freedom in proportion to 
its nature — one thing no more than another. Man 
has no more freedom in proportion to his nature, 
than any thing beneath him. But man is higher, 
more complex, and his motions more difficult to be 
traced. Man has reason; therefore he has free- 
dom according to that reason. But even that rea- 
son has its laws, as inevitable and necessary as 
any thing else. There is as much necessity, or 
certainty, in choice as in no choice; that is to say, 
as much in voluntary efforts as in involuntary, 
only of a different kind. A man must choose that 
which, all things considered, is the most desirable 
to him at the time. He cannot choose any thing 
else. And inasmuch as we are obliged to recog- 
nize first settings out, periods of decision, turning- 
points, moments of destiny in every human being, 
so it must be recognized, in perfect consistency 
with all Christian truth, but always with the ex- 
ceptions and qualifications before stated, that this 
first birth, and the fetal life that precedes it, is or 
may be the thing — the event, most important and 
most decisive in the whole earthly history of indi- 
vidual man. No one will certainly misunderstand OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 
95 
me now, even though the cases of absolute spirit- 
ual security may be but one to a million. I say, 
there is this possibility in the human race, and 
may be a large approximation to it now. And the 
cases of horrible ruin and misery which so fre- 
quently occur in society, and which run far into 
eternity too, I believe, I know, are traceable many 
times to this terrible depravity organized into a 
man from his very infancy. Bear with me till I 
illustrate and make clear my position. I pity hu- 
manity, more than I blame it, in the ordinary sense 
of that word, for the terrible fate that hangs over 
it; but this pity is greatly comforted by the assur- 
ance that all will be well at last. Look ye, broth- 
ers ! If, after such a birth, a man becomes a 
11 devil ” who might have become an angel, then, in 
spite of all argumentation, and the most misunder- 
stood mysteries of religion and the Bible, I find the 
chief, the most radical cause of it, in this fatal 
organism of the baby’s brain, spiritually and physi- 
cally considered. After that, perverted education 
and training. But with a good first birth, the 
whole thing might have been prevented. 
Stop, now! Be not too hasty in drawing con- 
clusions. Say not that this is to overthrow the 96 
POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 
whole moral nature of man — to abjure all free- 
dom, and consign him to a ruthless and unmerciful 
fate. For, whatever the writer may believe con- 
cerning the freedom of the#will, which, for want of 
space, and not being necessary, one way or the 
other, to the main subject, we cannot here go into 
at full length, — be it observed that it is not said 
that this inbred constitutional evil was such that 
the man could not resist it if he would. It is only 
said that if, after birth, a man becomes a devil 
who might have become an angel, the chief and 
most radical cause of it is recognized in the infant 
organism. You may say he might have resisted 
this tendency to evil. Perhaps he might. Call it 
then the occasion of sin. Still, if this evil had not 
existed, there would have been no sin. It matters 
not to the argument here, whether he could have 
resisted or not. I only say, the fact that this evil 
was in him was the cause or occasion of his weak- 
ness, temptation and fall. And was it not? Had 
he been perfectly pure and holy, with no tendency 
to evil, would it have been possible for him to have 
gone that way? It must have been so even with 
Adam, or whoever the first sinner was. “ Subject 
to vanity ” from the first — was he not ? If not, in OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 
97 
some degree or other, — if there was no hidden 
germ of inclination from the supreme good, it would 
require, I think, more than a theologian to account 
philosophically for his fall. What a matter of sim- 
plicity this is! In the name of common sense, is 
it any thing, can it be any thing, but the stuff that is 
in us, that causes us to assent to evil? Fortunately 
for the subject, it is not whether a man has power 
to resist or not; the simple truth is, if he yields, it 
is on account of this inborn corruption. Or, call it 
imperfection. Or, it may have been at first, igno- 
rance, unsuspecting simplicity. No matter what 
it was, it was something in the man—in the organ- 
ism. Now therefore I say, he that is best fortified 
with a noble organism at birth, all other circum- 
stances being equal, is least liable to fall; and he 
that conies into the world with the poorest, most 
malformed, most animal and brutal structure, with 
least of the spiritual and divine, is most likely to 
realize all the sad and bitter consequences of sin 
and misery. This, I say, is the chief and most rad- 
ical cause of it. At least it is the occasion which 
makes it inevitable. 
And if we see a certain sort of fate in it, we must 
not reflect too despondently upon the Creator, for, 98 
POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 
though sin and misery extend their dominion far 
over the tract of eternity, we must remember 
that God is good, and good only ; and that even 
evil is but an instrument in his hands to increase 
and magnify the amount of that good, with the ut- 
most impartiality, to all who experience it. The 
Devil himself — the Prince of all the rebels, if 
there be one, (and I am strongly inclined to think 
there is, though not of Milton’s pattern) shall finally, 
after the second death, see his own existence and 
mission in the light of an all-comprehending and 
beneficent wisdom which shall shame all the patch- 
work theology in the land. Forgive me if it is 
not so. 
But we must not depart from our main subject. 
With a good first birth, I say, all this train of evil 
might have been prevented. “ But how so ? ” in- 
quires one. “Can you have people born better than 
were our first parents? Can man come into the 
world with a more perfect moral and spiritual con- 
stitution than Adam had ? And yet he fell. What 
is to prevent the same catastrophe from occurring 
again, but such an operation after birth, from the 
supernatural heavens, as shall secure him forever?” 
Here indeed is involved an interesting point in OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 
99 
theology. And we reply by saying that it is un- 
doubtedly the plan of the divine providence to 
produce a humanity on this planet, in the far-off 
ages, which shall be so grounded in the spirit and 
the life of Christ, and so settled on the eternal 
foundations, as to be utterly impregnable to evil 
and all its charms. Yes, by the very experience 
through which the human race is carried, all the 
way from Adam, to have it firmer set in moral rec- 
titude, in the whole natural and spiritual mind, 
with regeneration so perfect as to be absolutely 
invulnerable to Satan, and beyond the possibility 
of fall! And this is no wild dream of ours. It is 
the grand possibility of the human race, when 
Christ shall have triumphed completely over all 
the world — made a thorough and universal work 
— abolished sin, and brought in everlasting right- 
eousness. 
It must be remembered that our first parents, and 
their immediate descendants, were in the infancy of 
the human race, tender, inexperienced, more like 
children than grown men; and it was the great 
God’s providence that they should pass out of that 
comparatively infantile state, and by the conflicts 
and battles with evil, know what it is, put it away, 100 
POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 
come into more external states of mind, even into 
the sensual and outermost degree of it, and so live 
in the enjoyment of entire nature as to be the full- 
grown, manly representatives of the highest possi- 
ble human perfection. All this could not be with- 
out evil. But evil having accomplished its mission, 
and the human race re-instated in more than its 
original glory, it cannot fall again, for the Lord in 
his Divine Humanity has made provision against 
that, and on this Rock we stand forever, securely 
blessed, beyond the touch of sin. 
So that the futile objection is done entirely away 
with, that a good first birth could not prevent this 
train of human evil. It could not at the creation, 
but it can in the redemption. It could not in Adam, 
but it can in Christ. It could not with our first 
parents, for they had not the experience that we 
have ; but after having tasted of the bitter fruits 
of evil, and put it away from us, and become strong 
in Christ, and gone on to perfection, there is no 
longer any falling away to sin. There is the possi- 
bility of complete redemption, both of soul and 
body. Glory be to God Almighty — Father, Son? 
and Holy Spirit; and everlasting praises to the 
Lord of glory forever 1 OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 
101 
Now, although it be myriads of ages before this 
consummation is fully realized, yet the principle of 
it we can see now. We can realize in part now. 
And we can so order the births of our children, 
by purity and wisdom in our own souls, and espe- 
cially by suitable marriages, and an accumulation 
of the heavenly life in the lineage of successive 
families, as to impart to them, from very infancy, 
a principle of saving efficacy, even an organism of 
controlling power, which shall be more to them 
than all the preaching and theology of Christendom 
can effect .for them in any crisis afterwards. It 
may even be to them as the second birth of the 
Spirit, which plants them securely in the Kingdom 
of heaven. And still the efforts after this are in- 
dispensable and inestimable, and can be reckoned 
only in eternity. Education, even, can effect mira- 
cles. And as before said, what may not an early, 
infant education do? We cannot conceive of the 
power which lies hidden in the parental sphere, 
especially in the mind and heart of the mother, 
over the tender susceptibilities of the infant. As 
soon as the child is born, it is in constant reception 
of influences, invisible and real, which are very 
much characterized by the prevailing disposition 102 
POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 
of the mother. The quality of her spirit enters 
even into the milk which is drawn from her. An 
angel only can see the difference between the sus- 
tenance furnished by a regenerate, Christian, pure 
and heavenly attempered woman, and one whose 
very flesh is corrupted with evil, and all the sources 
of whose life flow with secret poison. Then there 
is the spiritual sphere which envelops the child. 
The very touch, the looks, the voice, are all potent 
with character arid influence. And by beginning 
early (we cannot begin too early), with such les- 
sons of instruction as the child can be made to feel, 
to see, to sense in many ways; — by instilling a 
quick sense of right and wrong; by checking all 
bad tendencies and encouraging all good ones; by 
patience and perseverance and faithfulness, with 
a deep sense of parental responsibility; and in 
successive years, by following this child up with 
what might be done, and what ought to be done, 
and what, some day far in the future, will be done; 
— what marvels of transformation may be ac- 
complished — what floods of iniquity checked and 
thrown back forever ! “ Oh that mine head were 
waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears,” if weep- 
ing would do any good, for this culpable, shameful, OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 
103 
heaven-daring neglect of parents towards their 
own children ! Yes, the influence of education is 
acknowledged, and we never can make too much 
of it. It is even possible for a splendidly organ- 
ized child, with every natural encouragement and 
promise, in his brain, his body, his temperament, 
his noble soul — it is possible for such a one, by 
neglect or perversity of education, to be reared 
into a monster of wickedness, and perhaps to find 
his way to the gallows; while an unfortunate and 
pitiful specimen of native organic depravity, by 
such a training as might be given, would ascend by 
direct gradations to heights of honor and useful- 
ness. But what does this prove ? Only, that if the 
superior organism should have the same advanta- 
ges, the native and primitive superiority would 
also keep the advance through the whole course of 
life. For it must be remembered that education 
may as well be bestowed on the best as on the 
worst materials; and this being the case, and all 
other things being equal, where is the period of 
highest and most radical importance? Between 
conception and birth, most evidently. The spirit- 
ual qualifications and exceptions before mentioned 
the reader will of course bear in mind. VI. 
REGENERATION TRANSMISSIBLE BY NATURAL DE- 
SCENT TO THE CHILDREN OF REGENERATE 
PARENTS. 
EEGENERATION by the Divine Spirit may 
indeed go so far, either in this world or the 
next, as to effect the removal of all hereditary 
evil. This is its special work. But what I would 
have understood is, that even this work is trans- 
mitted by natural descent to the children of regen- 
erate parents. And they are born, not merely with 
good natural qualities, but, in so far as they par- 
take of the renewed temper, disposition, and affec- 
tions of the parentage, may as truly be said to be 
born of the Spirit, as when the divine grace de- 
scends in its most copious effusions upon the hearts 
of its immediate recipients. And here may be 
laid open a point in theology interesting to many 
believers, who are yet too apt to believe only, and 
in a narrow way, and not to see, with a wide ex- REGENERATION TRANSMISSIBLE. 
105 
tended \ision, the truths of a beautiful philosophy. 
It explains how it is that so many excellent men, 
of high Christian attainment, preachers and theolo- 
gians, frequently, of great eminence and piety, have 
become anxious and troubled on account of not 
being able to fix upon any particular time of their 
own conversion. And the fear has wavered in 
their minds, from this cause, whether they have 
really experienced the necessary change. This 
cause might indeed exist even if the change was 
wrought entirely in their own living, conscious ex- 
perience. Tor it is not necessary that we should 
be able so to time this experience, as to designate 
it by the year, the month, or the day. Influences 
which are so gradual may surely accomplish their 
silent work, and much more effectually, frequently, 
without our consciousness of sudden gusts, or pen- 
tecostal powers. But when it is reflected that the 
change so much relied on is not necessarily 
wrought wholly in our living experience as men, 
but may have been in part the heritage of a gra- 
cious birth from a regenerate parentage, which 
kept the sacred current flowing and widening all 
the way through life, it is apparent at once that 
many a favored mortal may have received so much 106 
REGENERATION TRANSMISSIBLE 
even at his nativity, that nature itself was all redo- 
lent with the Spirit, and the consciousness of time 
thoroughly obscured by the light of eternal reali- 
ties. 
Here indulge a passage or two from the Rev. Dr. 
Bushnell: “The children of such a stock are born, 
not in the flesh only, or the mere natural life of 
their parentage; but they are born, in a sense most 
emphatic, of the Spirit also; for this parentage is 
differed, as we are supposing, age by age, from its 
own mere nature in Adam, by the inhabiting grace 
of a supernatural salvation.” 
Again; speaking of the possibilities of this grace 
—11 The child is not to have the sad entail of any 
sensuality, or excess, or distempered passion upon 
him. The heritage of love, peace, order, conti- 
nence and holy courage is to be liis. He is not to 
be morally weakened beforehand, in the womb of 
folly, by the frivolous, worldly, ambitious expecta- 
tions of parents to be, consecrating all this non- 
sense in him. His affinities are to be raised by 
the godly expectations, rather, and prayers that go 
before; by the steady and good aims of their in 
dustry, by the great impulse of their faith, by the 
brightness of their hope, by the sweet continence BY NATURAL DESCENT. 
107 
of their religiously pure love in Christ. Born, 
thus, of a parentage that is ordered in all right- 
eousness, and maintains the right use of every 
thing, especially the right use of nature and mar- 
riage, the child will have just so much of heaven’s 
life and order in him beforehand, as have become 
fixed properties in the type of his parentage; and 
by this ante-natal nurture, will be set off in a 
way of noblest advantage, as respects all safety 
and success, in the grand experiment he has come 
into the world to make.” — Christian Nurture. 
How manifestly true and admirable all this is! 
To what extent this work of purifying the natural 
humanity may be carried, is a question which may 
meet with different answers, according to the faith 
and reason of men. Why not to the utter extinc- 
tion, some day far in the future — in the great day 
of God’s perfect work upon the earth, of the evil he- 
reditary principle ? This is the faith of the writer. 
We see no more reason for the endless continuance 
of moral evil in this world, than we do for the 
same continuance of poverty, sickness, or any other 
evil. We believe this world is destined to become 
a perfect heaven in ultimates. We believe that all 
the interests of virtue will eventually be as safe, 108 
REGENERATION TRANSMISSIBLE 
and its triumphs as glorious, without evil as with 
it. But not without difficulties, struggles, and the 
overcoming of obstacles—which we could imagine 
as well in heaven itself. But there is no call for 
amplification here. We know very well what the 
hereditary now is, and the weight of oppression it 
entails upon us: — that the tendency is so sure, 
and often inevitable in its operation, as, in spite of 
all efforts to the contrary, to carry its possessor 
frequently to the heights of heaven, or sink him to 
the depths of hell. Not for the hereditary in itself, 
but for what is voluntarily acted from it. We see, 
at least, that it is so in this world, and we have 
reason to believe it will be measurably so in the 
world to come. I know that, in a certain sense, a 
man may be said to receive no punishment in the 
spiritual world for his hereditary evil. That is to 
say, as Swedenborg would perhaps say, he receives 
there no arbitrary, judicial inflictions from an ex- 
ternal source, for these evils; but he must surely 
suffer, for a time at least, there as well as here, for 
a diminished capacity, a discordant, angularized, un- 
fortunate nature, and the necessary outbreaks to 
which this nature is liable; and it is the parents BY NATURAL DESCENT. 
109 
who are more accountable than he is, for what they 
have organized into him at his first birth. 
Now, therefore, seeing ufliat this hereditary na- 
ture is — how it spreads and magnifies itself over 
two worlds, wTe may surely demand the most se- 
rious consideration of it. The great problem of 
to-day is, how to inaugurate a new style of human- 
ity at birth. The Christ child — born of the Di- 
vine Spirit, not of impure lust, — the second ad- 
vent of the Lord in a new first birth. For, be it 
well considered, this second birth of the Christian 
nowhere gives such hopeful and substantial fruits, 
as when, by hereditary descent and special efforts 
to that end, it culminates in a beautiful and com- 
paratively pure child, fresh from the Creator’s 
hands. And if Christians would only see this, and 
think more of their offspring as well as their own 
souls, and so behave, with what a tremendous im- 
petus would this second birth be invested, going 
down to the generations of men, and springing up 
in noble armies of God’s elect, to do battle with 
the hosts of hell, and “ beat down Satan under our 
feet ” ! 
I repeat, then, without fear of contradiction, that 
u;l the preaching and theology of Christendom, 110 
REGENERATION TRANSMISSIBLE 
cannot step in after this fatal first birth, to produce 
the glories and wonders that might have been pro- 
duced before it, and reflected with incomparable 
magnificence and splendor after it. If they can, 
let Shakspeares, Bacons, Miltons, Washingtons, and 
Swedenborgs, be produced from Ann Street and the 
Five Points. No, no; even the natural character 
— the genius of a mighty mind, affords an equal 
argument for the spiritual of this subject; for re- 
generation goes down the channels of a natural 
humanity, glorifying all its faculties, as the blood 
of ancestry runs through the families of man. So, 
then, the clergyman has his office, and it is a glo- 
rious one: and the Physiologist, Psychologist, and 
Philosopher has his. Clergymen have too much 
overlooked the order of nature: — 
“Nature, that never swerves nor bends, 
To suit itself to sacred whims.” 
Conceiving of spiritual things as quite discon- 
nected from physical things,—having no systematic 
pneumatology, or philosophy of spirit at all, — un- 
able to tell how it differs from matter and how it 
does not, save in its manifestations and effects,—• 
and seeing not the organism of the soul as well BY NATURAL DESCENT. 
111 
as of the body, and how it is transmitted by heredi- 
tary descent in and with the body, and modified by 
a subtle and potent psychology there; they set a 
value upon the new birth, the second birth, as en- 
tirely disconnected from the first. Or, if we do 
hear in the churches, of the “ children of believing 
parents,” it is faint, and has a dull, ecclesiastical 
sound, and is almost entirely destitute of the deep 
importance of the subject. It is a mischievous 
heresy, fraught with danger to the soul. It is 
not alone in the marts of business — in the halls of 
pleasure — in the resorts of wicked men, and in 
the enticements of youth and of the senses, that 
perdition opens its gates and hurries off its thou- 
sands. Damnation is at the birth of the infant! 
and the great God’s salvation shines forth nowhere 
more conspicuously than here. Nowhere, more 
powerfully, does his Spirit operate upon human 
nature, than in this most miraculous first birth. 
One is as miraculous as the other. They are both 
under sovereign law. Whoso is not prepared to 
preach this has no commission from highest sources. 
The Bishop may lay his hands upon his head, but 
futilely. We have a more authoritative “establish- 
ment”—a higher and more demonstrative “sue* 112 
REGENERATION TRANSMISSIBLE 
cession,” here in our plain men and women. The 
head of the infant, the body, the fine integuments 
of his physical organism, the very quality and 
structure of his soul, are determined by a pre-natal 
process, and here are the scriptures of God’s truth 
to man. We may do much, I have said, by careful 
watching, faithful nurturing, training and unfold- 
ing; but all our efforts arc now limited and condi* 
tioned, both in degree and kind, by this fated or- 
ganism which lies here before us. This is the 
fruit of our obedience or disobedience to the laws 
established. Not ours only; the people before the 
flood were engaged in the production of that or- 
ganism ; and the thousand generations to come 
cannot entirely undo what the thousand previous 
generations have been doing. Eternity itself will 
witness to this act; and the very angels of heaven 
stand, some higher and some lower, for what the 
earth has contributed to their quality and genius. 
The most important question, then, I say, — the 
question of questions, is how to inaugurate a new 
style of humanity at birth. “ There are people,” 
says Dr. Holmes, “who think that every thing may 
be done, if the doer, be he educator or physician, 
be only called in season. No doubt—but in season BY NATURAL DESCENT. 
113 
would often be a hundred or two years before the 
child was born: and people never send so early as 
that.” But let us see, notwithstanding the great 
truthfulness of this somewhat satirical remark, 
how really hopeful a case we have here for human- 
ity’s practitioner. And here I am anxious to im- 
press upon the mind, not only that these control- 
ling and powerful pre-natal conditions exist; I 
think the assent to this proposition may by this 
time be fully accorded : but what is most practical 
and experimental is, that they are so largely under 
our power — that we ourselves can so easily con- 
trol them. This is manifest from the cases which 
have already been given, and many more of a well- 
authenticated and interesting character, where not 
only the whole nature seems to have been affected 
by the previous condition of the parents, but 
where particular traits, both of a moral and intel- 
lectual character, have been prominently intro- 
duced into the genius of the child. How slight are 
the causes which serve to throw the whole force 
and current of nature out of its accustomed and 
expected order; and what variations of form, dispo- 
sition, and talent, in the same family, under differ- 
ent influences ! As before said, it is not all charge- 114 
REGENERATION TRANSMISSIBLE 
able to the immediate parentage, or even the most 
continued lineage. Causes undoubtedly existed in 
the Eternal Mind — in the first germs of souls, 
for the most diversified forms and characters of 
men. Without this, it seems, the varied and spe- 
cific uses of the world could not be provided for. 
And as there are so many varied qualities in the 
Divine Mind, it is reasonable that different propor- 
tional combinations should have entered into the 
original essences of different human souls. It is 
not at all reasonable to suppose that all the mighty 
hosts of intelligences, on all worlds, with all the 
differing grades — rank on rank of genius, quality, 
and power,—and in the angelic heavens, of cher- 
ubim, and seraphim, and beings of supernal glory 
and brightness — the varied ministry of an infi- 
nitely varied and stupendous providence, all sprang 
forth from an absolute equality of origin. We can 
believe more easily the story of the seers and our 
own rational imagination. Still, with the facts at 
command, we cannot tell how much the original 
tendencies may have been subverted, nor how 
much may have been added, or what particular 
traits may have been quickened to prominency or 
marvellous proficiency, as in the prodigies and BY NATURAL DESCENT. 
115 
marked cases continually occurring amongst us. 
If a rounded common sense may have been all 
crushed to idiocy, if the happiest dispositions are 
so easily produced by experiment and calculation 
on our part, if spirituality rather than inertness, 
intellect instead of dulness, mathematical and me- 
chanical genius, and distinguished beneficence, 
and roving and restlessness, and theft, and even a 
murderous hate and ferocity, can be traced so di- 
rectly to causes which we can control, what may 
not be done by the most assiduous study, and Chris- 
tian application of this subject ? Parents, what 
can be done ! I put it to you with all the force and 
moral importance I am capable of commanding. 
Are there not, indeed, special and proximate causes 
within our power, of almost miraculous reach, by 
which we can mould the new-born being at will, 
thereby laying a better foundation for his second 
birth than all other efforts can effect afterwards? 
Nay, without which it would seem, in many cases, 
there is little or no hope of ever effecting a very 
great deliverance from the filth and iniquity of the 
world. 
And consider what the effect must be of a con- 
tinuance of such practice from family to family for 116 
REGENERATION TRANSMISSIBLE. 
several generations;—what a determined and per- 
sistent course of high Christian living, purity and 
piety, — a rolling-on of the stream of divine grace 
and healing, from sire to son, and into all branches 
of the lineage, from year to year and from genera- 
tion to generation, might bring to the households 
of faithfulness ! What more than royal privileges 
— heaven save the word! — what a nobility of 
God’s own choosing— what a durable aristocracy 
of honor and glory ! Can we ever have it so with 
our present habits? Can we think of it for a mo- 
ment without utter faithlessness? VII. 
LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF SEXUAL INTER- 
COURSE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 
WHAT then shall be done ? Bear with me 
now, if I come into immediate contact with 
the most private and responsible practice of hu- 
man beings and of parents. For if the sexual in- 
tercourse of parties cannot be regulated and hon- 
ored by a higher law, and nobler considerations 
suitable to its sacredness, then we must forever 
despair of any thorough and radical reformation of 
the masses of mankind. Here is the great source 
and fountain of depravity, or the initiation to 
purity and beauty of the sweetness and order of 
heaven. Until the nuptial act itself is made holy, 
in vain do we look for holiness in the temple of 
humanity. And yet there is nothing, perhaps, of 
any approaching importance, which is so over- 
clouded with utter vacuity of mind, divorced from 
its sacredness, and surrendered to earthliness and 118 
LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF 
vanity. The sin of it is scarcely contemplated 
from the utter indifference to its virtue. And yet 
is there an act delegated to mortals by their Crea- 
tor, of higher or more hallowed import ? Is there 
any worship mor-e sacred or divine? 
One hardly knows how to express himself here. 
The real truth is so at odds with the common esti- 
mation and practice, that the charge of affectation 
is apt to be made. I shall relieve myself at once, 
then, by quoting from a very questionable book, 
and from very doubtful authority. Of course I 
have reference to seership, and to statements made 
from a professedly higher view than mortals are 
generally privileged to make. But what I wish the 
reader to observe is this: — that though he may 
not give the least credit to the source of the state- 
ment, and disbelieve utterly in the possibility of 
any condition which would qualify one to see arid 
say as much, yet the language employed is certainly 
admirable, and if not the description of a reality, 
it is what ought to be such, and what, I am per- 
suaded, will be, when this earth is redeemed from 
its corruptions. Speaking of a planet far distant 
from the supposed boundaries of our solar system, 
where the inhabitants have preserved themselves SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 
119 
in a pure and unfallen condition, tlie author says 
—“ They are taught here that there are signs from 
the Lord which precede conception, and that, in 
the nuptial sanctuary, there is present a light 
which descends from the Lord Himself. This light 
is visible for seven successive diurnal periods of 
repose, during which they sanctify themselves in 
an especial manner, both husband and wife. At 
the end of that time the conjugial ardors descend 
from the Heavens, while the wife is absorbed in 
celestial communion, and the bridegroom receptive 
of the Divine sphere. So their children are born 
in holiness and shapen in sanctification, and the 
fruit of the womb is called holiness. 
Here I saw a fair-haired young maiden, robed 
in spotless white, kneeling before a golden altar. 
She was in speechless devotion, and unconscious 
of my presence. In her genius she was celestial, 
and one of those who know truth from good. I 
was permitted to explore the quality of her mind. 
She was worshipping the Lord and beseeching 
Him that He would so pervade her future spouse 
that all the fruits of their union might be holy in 
their initiament; that they might be called holi- 
ness from their first state; and that she might be 120 
LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF 
a mother to such only. She had been instructed 
in the arcana concerning the subsequent state of 
the embryo after the conception. Her thoughts 
were of the utmost intensity of purity, as it seemed 
to me, and although in her thought she was only 
conscious that she herself was desiring the things 
which she sought, I was enabled to see the Lord 
in His Divine Operation present in her interiors, 
in the crystal palaces of the will, and in the un- 
derstanding also. 
“What is called passional attraction on our earth 
is an inversion of Divine order. Conjugial attrac- 
tion is entirely different. The diffused joy of the 
Divine Presence is in all the breathing frame. The 
pulse is slow and rhythmical. The melting look of 
the eye expresses chastity mingled with unuttered 
fondness. The soft night brings no delirium. The 
yieldings of the bride are in obedience to the de- 
scent of a direct influx from the Lord Himself; 
but more than this I am not permitted to narrate. 
“The existence of married associates upon un- 
perverted orbs is one perpetual festival, during 
which the first ardors of youthful love, free from 
all the disorders which attach themselves to the 
sexual passion in our subversive race, ascend in a SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 
121 
continual succession of the most serene and inte- 
rior, yet sensationally exquisite delights, from the 
natural, through the spiritual, to the celestial de- 
gree. The children born of such unions are like 
the blossoms of the tube-rose upon its stem; and 
their external bodies, free from hereditary impuri- 
ties, are sweet as the bosoms in which they nestle 
and the lips which they delight to kiss. Birth is a 
benediction, and the rite of nuptial union an act 
of worship.” * 
Again I say, if this is not true, I should like to 
see so much wisdom practised on our poor earth. 
We do not ask the reader’s assent to the literal 
history, but to the spirit and wisdom of it we most 
religiously do. Let us proceed to say, Then, more 
directly, that married associates, in order to have 
pure children, must pay more attention to their 
habits of intercourse, and view it altogether from a 
higher principle, in the light of science and reli- 
gion. The begetting of children is no work to be 
left to mere impulse, passion, and chance. And I 
would ask — what greater wrong can be conceived 
than to bring into the world a family of human 
beings, (and alas, how many families !) tainted and 
* Arcana of Christianity, Nos. Oil, 012, 010, 291. 122 
LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF 
corrupted from the mother’s womb, with inherited 
dispositions which are sure to make them misera- 
ble, if not to disgrace and degrade them as out- 
casts and criminals?—children who have no agency 
in their own existence — no voice for or against 
the life which is thrust upon them, but who might, 
frequently, could they be heard in advance, and for 
all that this life is concerned in, pray earnestly to 
heaven for non-existence rather than the wretched 
burden they are called to bear. Such parents 
would not, generally, willingly introduce their 
children to the schools of vice and crime which 
this world ever offers with open doors to all who 
will enter. They would not willingly throw in 
their way any moral obstruction, or tempt them 
aside into forbidden paths. But they do more than 
this, ignorantly though it be, but from henceforth, 
to every reader of these pages at least, let it be a 
conscious, heaven-daring sin. They organize into 
them (a work seventy times more efficacious than 
any education afterwards) the spirit of selfishness, 
hatred, theft, drunkenness, murder, jealousy, re- 
venge, ambition, avarice, prostitution, and every 
kind of evil which afflicts humanity. These pro- 
pensities are sometimes so strong that they are led, SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 
as it were, irresistibly, to the practice of that par- 
tieular evil which was prominent in the parents, 
one or both of them, at the time of conception, 
and perhaps in the mother during the whole pe- 
riod between conception and birth. 
Consider now but one evil — to many it seems 
the most trying evil in the land — this vice of sen- 
suality between the sexes. Who shall say how 
much of fornication, prostitution and adultery, is 
directly caused by the predominance of mere lust 
and sensuality in what should be the holiest of all 
acts between the married associates? Consider 
how children are begotten! Not in the spirit 
of a heaven-beseeching, God-regarding, spiritually- 
prepared state of the parents, for a suitable time 
previous to the nuptial rite, but with the indif- 
erence of the animal — with the stupid disregard 
of the brute beast of the field. Christian parents, 
too, who would deem it a sacrilege not to pre- 
pare for a church ceremony — baptism or the com- 
munion — will enter upon what should be the 
holiest of all acts with mere animality and thought- 
lessness. And the poor laborer, perhaps, who has 
been at work all day, with every faculty tired out 
and exhausted, will come home weary and spirit- 124 
LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF 
less and stupid, and assume the dread responsibility 
of begetting a child! Is it any wonder that we 
have sensuality, licentiousness in all its forms, and 
the most hopeless specimens of dulness and va- 
cancy, — mere runts and pygmies and dolts of 
humanity, with an initiation to existence like this ? 
Would not the wonder be greater if we did not 
have them ? Considering all the effects of organ- 
ization— its power to communicate function, &c., 
“ can there be any doubt,” says an English writer 
on this subject, “ that the peculiar state of the or- 
ganization, and the peculiar exercise of every 
function, at the moment of erotic orgasm [excite- 
ment of love] must exert the most powerful, the 
most undivided influence over the organization and 
function of the delicate, susceptible ens, then and 
by these very acts, called into existence ? * * * 
Can it be supposed, then, to matter little whether 
the new being be the product and the personifica- 
tion of intellectual, or of mere sensual pleasure ! 
or whether that pleasure be one of gentle emotion, 
or burning passion ! ” 
But it is not among the lower and common 
classes only, to which we have passingly referred, 
that we trace the inadvertences alluded to. How SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 
125 
often is it tlie case, that, among the higher and 
more fashionable circles, the excitement of the 
ball-room, or the gaming-table, or the stimulant 
wine, or the late supper, is made the preparatory 
means of a like prostitution of the highest and 
holiest rites of humanity ! Whereas, if we should 
view this matter aright, and proceed wisely and 
religiously, while it would be divested of none of 
its appropriate pleasures and satisfactions, but ele- 
vated, consecrated, and sublimated, by the divine 
approbation and the influx of a higher joy from the 
orderly fountains of life and being, it would also 
tend to the introduction of a nobler and more spir- 
itual humanity. 
I need not remark, more than has already been 
observed, upon the nature of the preparations here 
demanded. Suffice it to say, that with a general 
information on this subject, and a realization of its 
importance truly becoming its greatness, no person 
will allow himself or herself to engage in the gen- 
erative act with any indifference whatever. Such 
a one cannot divest himself of the humanities, or 
all that distinguishes him from the brute creation, 
and see and realize nothing spiritual and immortal 
in it. Both parties, therefore, will endeavor to 126 
LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF 
preserve that becoming attitude of soul and spirit 
towards each other, by which all the acts of the 
body are sanctified and made holy. If a general 
and habitual state of knowledge and religiousness 
exists in the married pair, particular observances of 
state and preparation will suggest themselves. 
But most particularly, to young married asso- 
ciates who have not yet become parents, and to 
all others who are contemplating the procreative 
office, it is certainly the suggestion, both of duty 
and wisdom, that a time so fraught with the very 
sources of life and character should, to say the 
least, be invested with as much seriousness and 
mental concentration as the hours given to any 
other duty of great interest to humanity. 
“ And at eventide kneel ye together, that your joy he not unhallowed. 
An gels that are around you shall be glad, those loving ministers of 
mercy.” 
I am aware of the delicate nature of the subject 
on which I am writing, and my words are chosen 
and premeditated. I am fully aware also of the 
duty which I owe to ray fellow-creatures, and of 
the possibilities which may result even from this 
little treatise. I write, therefore, as one who 
knows his responsibility. And with all due defer- SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 
127 
ence to delicacy, and custom, and the present state 
of morals and manners, I must not hesitate to call 
that man or woman morally insensate and stolidly 
blind, who does not feel the importance, and act 
upon it, of this most responsible and far-reaching 
act of the powers of life and enjoyment. Let such 
preparation, then, be made, as would naturally sug- 
gest itself to sensible, refined, and intelligent men 
and women. Not only immediately before the 
nuptial act, but as a constant habit of the mind in 
reference to it. Also, during the whole of that 
most important period—the time of gestation with 
the mother. For it is a question with some — 
Which has the most influence over the future be- 
ing, the moment of conception, or the long period 
of gestation? Let all vanity, and folly, and impurity, 
and lust, and mere self-indulgence, be put entirely 
away; and let the requisite circumstances and sur- 
roundings be as abundantly provided as they can, 
— the right food for the mind, the proper stimu- 
lants and excitements to the intellectual, moral, and 
spiritual nature; the uplifting of the whole soul 
to the sublimer mysteries and glories of eternity; 
the exercise of the very best affections of the so* 
cial, family, and domestic circle; the most active 128 
LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF 
human love and beneficence for all around; books, 
if they are needed; beautiful objects of nature 
and art, as they may be required and commanded; 
and above all, a spirit of calm, tranquil, human joy, 
such as proceeds from a devout trust in the Eter- 
nal Father ; in short, as perfect and happy a frame 
of mind as it is possible to obtain from all the re- 
sources of nature and the spirit. And if, in addi- 
tion to all this, both parties will make it a special 
point to retire in secret and in prayer to God, and 
beseech the Almighty for his best benediction on 
the prospective parents and offspring, I have no 
doubt that the gates of heaven would be opened, 
and a select and spiritual influence descend into 
the souls of the parties, impregnating the very 
germ of the future offspring, fashioning it, even in 
the mother’s womb, after a nobler pattern, and sav- 
ing it from a thousand maladies of our fallen and de- 
praved humanity. Try it, oh parents to be, try it! 
Is it not strange that so few do make any system- 
atic effort of this nature? They see what is done 
in the brute creation — what the farmer does with 
his stock, and how he labors to improve each 
breed, and how successful he is, but they seem 
to think (or rather not to think — to be utterly SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 
129 
unconcerned about it all) that nothing can be 
definitely projected in the human world — that 
the style and character of children is a matter 
left entirely to chance — that parents have noth- 
ing to do with it — that it is a matter left entirely 
to the Creator, as to what the offspring may be, 
as though God had forsaken his method of acting 
by law here, and left the whole thing to human 
hap and confusion! When shall we learn our 
vocations and duties ? 
I will here relate a case of actual experiment 
upon the principles here unfolded. I quote from 
the work before alluded to — Intellectual and 
Moral Qualities Transmissible. The author’s name 
is not given, but it is known to be a lady. She 
had previously been remarking upon an opposite 
case, of a young mother of indolent habits, and 
educated for display. “ During the whole time 
of her pregnancy she occupied herself in paying 
and receiving visits of ceremony, practising mu- 
sic, embroidery, and other fashionable accomplish- 
ments, and in endeavoring to attain the reputation 
of a superior taste in dress. Her reading was 
limited and confined to works of imagination. 
Her child was born at the full time, but so brief 130 
LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF 
and easy was the labor, that neither physician nor 
nurse was present. It was plump and fat enough, 
but with a head diminutive in size and soft in 
quality. 
“Years have not altered those conditions; the 
child in intellect is below mediocrity, and the man 
will be the same. In the other instance, the 
mother was past forty years of age, of an ener- 
getic temperament, active habits, and self-edu- 
cated. For some months previous to the birth 
of her fifth child, she had become a convert to 
the belief in the transmission of mental and moral 
qualities. To test the truth of this belief, she ex- 
ercised her own mental powers to their full extent. 
She attended the lectures of the season, both lit- 
eracy and scientific; read much, but such works 
only as tend to exercise and strengthen the reason- 
ing faculties, and improve the judgment. The 
domestic and foreign reviews, history, biography, 
&c. She was also engaged in the active duties of 
a large family, in which she found full scope for 
the exercise of the moral sentiments, but never 
allowed any thing to disturb the equanimity of her 
temper. When her time came, she was in labor 
two days; all her suffering, however, was forgotten SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 
131 
at the birth of a son, with a head of the finest 
form, firmest quality, and largest size, — with the 
reflecting and moral organs very conspicuous. A 
head, in short, on which nature had written in char, 
acters too legible to be misunderstood, strength, 
power, and capability, and of whom it is already 
said, ‘He is the youngest of his family, but will 
soon become its head.’ ” 
Here I wish to convey a caution. Be not too 
anxious to secure results. An over anxiety, or too 
much attention, may work anomalies in the infant 
organism, and produce either that very anxiety, 
in an unhappy manifestation of it, or distortions 
and enormities. Be calm, unanxious, looking to 
God and trusting in Him, and surely no danger 
can come of a healthful, judicious excitement of 
the faculties and affections, but much harm may 
come from the neglect of it. Have the right kind 
of reading, too. Mr. Combe mentions in his Con- 
stitution of Man, a lady of considerable talent, who 
wrote to a Phrenological friend, — “From the age 
of two I foresaw that my eldest son’s restlessness 
would ruin him ; and it has been even so. Yet he 
was kind, brave, and affectionate. I read the Iliad 
for six months before he saw the light, and have 132 
LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF 
often wondered if that could have any influence 
on him. He was actually an Achilles.” 
But every sensible person must know the effect 
of imprudence, over-excitement, ill-chosen books, 
indulgence in bad temper, and every thing that 
tends to derange the faculties, or lower the moral 
nature. The caution, therefore, will be heeded. 
Surely, judicious attention is better than utter 
neglect; and where no attention at all is paid, the 
indulgence of bad habits and injurious practice is 
almost sure to ensue. 
As an example of the latter kind, the work of 
the lady above quoted affords another melancholy 
instance. A lovely woman, remarkable for her 
good sense and kindness of disposition, had mar- 
ried a man of superior abilities, with whom she 
lived in the midst of elegance, refinement, and for- 
tune. “ Thus situated, her children were born 
under the happiest influences, were beautiful, 
bright, and some of them highly talented. At the 
age of thirty-eight, the mother ceased beaiing 
children, and felt happy at the thought of being at 
length free from the confinement attending the 
cares of infancy. This state of things continued 
a few years, but was unexpectedly changed by SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 
133 
symptoms of pregnancy. This was a most unwel- 
come prospect for one who had entered into the 
dissipation of fashionable life, and was determined, 
in future, to enjoy and not suffer. Various means 
were resorted to, to avoid the approaching calam- 
ity, but were unsuccessful. After much discon- 
tent and repining, a girl was born, inheriting a 
large portion of the unhappy, repining, and bitter 
temper which possessed the mother for months 
previous to her birth. 
“ The attempt to violate the laws of the Creator, 
in this instance, has been most signally punished; 
for in the perverse, rebellious spirit, and cloudy 
brow of her unhappy daughter, the mother now 
recognizes the temper in which she so imprudently 
indulged during her pregnancy.” 
Here is an occasion for the recognition of the 
truth of what is sometimes deemed nothing but a 
11 beautiful superstition ” of the Irish; viz., that 
“those children who are received from the Al- 
mighty as blessings, prove to be so; and that 
those who are not received as such, turn out the 
contrary.” A truth of great consequence, surely; 
for how can these feelings of pleasure and thank- 
fulness with which the children have been looked 134 
LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF 
for, operate otherwise than causatively into a 
happy organic; disposal of the fetal substance? — 
a blessing indeed to the parent and the child 1 
And vice versd, with contrary feelings. 
I was conversing with a lady — a physician, 
upon this subject, yesterday, — one who has paid 
great attention to it, and made it the study and 
practice of her whole life. She assured me, that 
in numberless cases under her own cognizance, 
and sometimes by her direction, the quality of the 
offspring was so far from being a thing of chance, 
that particular patterns and fashions of humanity, 
in the face and in the character, had been repeat- 
edly produced by direct design and elfort of the 
mothers. One was the case of a noble boy who, 
but for her advice and counsel, would have never 
known existence, but who was born into the world 
in full and beautiful proportions, and now rejoices 
in existence at the age of fourteen years. His 
mother had determined upon an abortion, from a 
supposed malformation which she imagined ■would 
inevitably be produced in the child, by a fright she 
had received while in pregnancy, from a disagree- 
able animal. She uras greatly alarmed by it, and 
a physician had been called for the purpose. She SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 
135 
was persuaded by the lady above mentioned not to 
attempt it, but rather to fix her mind intently upon 
a higher pattern — for if a low and disagreeable 
object could produce its likeness, surely a high 
and ennobling one could — and she accordingly 
kept her mind so habitually fixed upon a certain 
individual of high and commanding reputation in 
the nation, that the child, when born, bore upon 
his countenance unmistakable resemblances to the 
individual referred to. Here was an ugly impres- 
sion overborne by a good one. It so happened 
that I knew that child when quite young, and had 
often remarked to him, in a sportive way, this 
very resemblance, for it was very striking. 
Another case was that of a beautiful picture — 
a portrait which a gentlemen had hanging in his 
room, and of which a friend, as he once entered the 
room when this gentleman’s child was sitting in it, 
exclaimed —“ Why 1 what a fine likeness that 
is of your child! ” “ No,” replied the gentleman, 
“ the child is the likeness of the picture.” “ How 
so?” inquired his friend. It proved that the 
mother of this child had so intently kept the 
image of this picture in her mind, and looked at 
it so much and so admiringly, during her preg- 136 
LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF 
nancy, that it had reflected its beauties upon the 
young child’s face! It had daguerrotyped them 
there, both in color and in feature ! 
And as to spots, and marks, and impressions of 
various things, from so slight a circumstance as 
the longing for a particular kind of fruit at this 
critical time, which are so often produced upon 
the body of the child, why may we not generalize 
from these facts to more important conclusions? 
If so slight and transient a thing can produce such 
permanent results upon the body, what may not 
the indulgence of a whole course of feeling, dis- 
position, and thought, for several months, do for 
the soul of that same child, and how great is our 
responsibility 1 Oh, how great — and still how 
heedless are we all! Must there not be a new 
interest, a fresh stimulus, imparted to this mat- 
ter,— a new era of pre-natal education, that our 
children shall not come into the world “ conceived 
in sin and shapen in iniquity,” but as hoi} and 
sanctified from the mother’s womb, born beauties, 
original specimens of a higher design, a that our 
sons may ” indeed “ be as plants grown up in their 
youth; that our daughters may be as corner-stones, 
polished after the similitude of a palace ” ? SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 
13? 
Now, I believe with the lady referred to, the 
substance of whose conversation is reported here, 
that, within certain limits, God has determined 
that we shall have about such children as we 
want; — that He has established laws, which we 
are to study and discover just as we do any other 
laws of nature, and conform ourselves to them in 
the rearing of families. If we want certain re- 
sults we must obey certain laws. And we can 
have good children, or intellectual children, or 
even particular patterns and fashions of humanity, 
by putting into requisition the orderly means and 
conditions for securing them. Right marriage is 
one of them. Prayer is another. Samuel the 
prophet, you remember, was specially prayed for 
by his mother, previous to his birth, and the child 
was in answer to the prayer. 1 Sam. i. 5-28. A 
good woman has often been heard to say of a par- 
ticular daughter —11 That child is a child of many 
prayers; I have no fears concerning her.” There 
are other means; and these means will be devel- 
oped more and more clearly, according to our 
purity and right use of them. The time may 
come when, if we want musical children, we can 
have them. If we want sons and daughters of LA ins AND CONDITIONS OF 
art, or children of mercy and beneficence, we can 
have them. If we want poetical, philosophical, or 
spiritually-minded children, such as shall adorn 
and enrich the world with the contributions of 
their taste and wisdom and piety, we can have 
them. All this, I say, within certain limits estab- 
lished by the Creator above us, whose super- 
natural resources and directions, as already rec- 
ognized, are fatally beyond our reach and our 
control. But within the limits of our agency, 
especially with regard to the general moral and 
intellectual character, and with the most perfect 
recognition of the divine over-ruling, we may 
mould and fashion the original humanity of the 
world just as we do any thing else. And it is our 
duty to do it. If we do not do it, we dishonor our 
commission as pro-creators of the human race. 
Why should we have power to direct every other 
interest of mankind, to order our houses, and su- 
perintend their particular styles, and improve and 
beautify the architecture of the world, and have 
no power at all over the differing styles of human- 
ity? Is a man’s house of more importance than 
the man himself, or the children who live in it? 
Must they all be taken as of chance, or as of exciu- SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, PARENTAGE, ETC 
139 
sively divine direction? Surely we need not so 
stumble in the mere hap-hazard work of thought- 
less generation, as to produce and present this 
mass of filth and folly to the Creator’s sight,— 
oh! in a thousand times worse sense than the 
great bard lamented the vain and strutting actor, 
— this mass, I say, of diseased and dwarfed and 
mutilated men and women, so bad that you would 
think that some of nature’s journeymen had made 
them, and not nature herself, they imitate humanity 
so abominably. 
But I should not recommend, as in the case be- 
fore alluded to, placing before the mind’s e}re one 
particular image, either of art, or of a particular 
person: this may do in some cases of feebleness, 
where the mind is unable to control itself by gen- 
eral principle, to displace a disagreeable impres- 
sion by an agreeable one: but in general, a simple 
elevation of the mind to its loftiest ideal — to God, 
and heaven, and angelic purity and beauty, leaving 
it to the Divine Providence how to shape and 
fashion the infant, would be better than to call up 
particular images of persons or things, as we know 
that imperfection reigns in all, and there might be 
danger of imbibing the bad qualities as wrell as 140 
LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF 
the good of the particular image so summoned to 
the vision. Indeed, so quick and susceptible is the 
tender human embryo on such occasions, that par- 
ticular traits or features of certain neighbors who 
have been especially kind to the mother during 
pregnancy — who have brought certain gifts and 
bestowed them, have been found distinctly visible 
in the child’s character or countenance. 
All this shows the vast importance of a willing, 
determining, designing mind on the part of the 
mother, in reference to her offspring. Much may 
be done — much ought to be done, by availing 
ourselves of our knowledge of the laws of nature 
here, as in anjr other department of art or culture. 
Here is a grand field for human improvement. 
And with design, and care, and persistent atten- 
tion, (not overranxiety) we may vary the styles of 
humanity as we vary the fashions of any lesser 
interest, and introduce to the world better original 
specimens, with less care and trouble to ourselves 
and our children, and with praise and gladness and 
triumph in the Creator’s name ! 
But we must pass to another branch, of the sub- 
ject. Be it observed here, in. reference to the 
specific act of sexual conjunction, that there are SEX UAL INTERCOURSE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 
141 
some well-intended, but false theories abroad. It 
has been seriously put forth by a certain class of 
physiologists and reformers, that the act of inter- 
course should never be indulged in except for the 
legitimate purpose of procuring offspring. Doubt- 
less, from the great and unlimited abuse of the sex- 
ual powers — the gross indulgence which extends 
through nearly all classes of society, this extreme 
of continence and prohibition has been promulgated 
as the only legitimate and orderly use, and design 
of the Creator. This indeed shows purity of in- 
tention, and is an approximation to the truth. 
But we are compelled to regard the subject some- 
what differently. Much as we deplore the sad 
consequences of the present depravity, we recog- 
nize another and a different function in the sexual 
adaptation — one more consonant with the high 
powers of the soul, and favorable to the spiritual 
nature. The truth is, were the human race in 
that divine order which it should be, this inter- 
course between the sexes would become the direct 
channel of the communication of a really spiritual 
life — an energy and vitality which would be felt 
through the whole physical frame, and diffused 
throughout the soul. For, gathered into this cen- 142 
LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF 
tre of the organic system, are the most highly 
sublimated essences, both of the spiritual and the 
physical nature, such as furnish the seminal sub- 
stance with its power and vitality, and in which is 
the very seed of man. Here, in fact, is the prime 
focus of life and energy. There are several fo- 
cuses in the human body : the hands are such; 
hence the force of magnetic power communicated 
by them. The mouth or lips are another. Hence 
the disposition and strong impulse to-kiss, or com- 
municate. But the organs of generation are, 
above all others, the grand focus of all the powers 
and capabilities of man. Here are concentrated 
the very life fluids of the system, both spiritually 
and physically. Hence the pleasure of communi- 
cation, for here also is the seed of a new life — 
of a new being, imparted to the natural mother. 
To quote the words of the great philosopher 
and seer again, (Swedenborg) “ The origin of con- 
jugiai love is divine love, divine wisdom, and 
divine use, which three proceed as one from the 
Lord, and thence flow in as one into the souls of 
men, and through their souls into their minds, 
and there into the interior affections and thoughts, 
through these into the desires near the body, and SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 
143 
from these through the breast into the genital re- 
gion, where all things derived from their first 
origin are at once. 
“ Indeed, love and wisdom with use not only 
make man, but also are man ; yea, what perhaps 
you will wonder at, they propagate man ; for in 
the seed of the man is his soul in a perfect human 
form, covered with substances from the purest 
things of nature, out of which a body is formed 
in the womb of the mother.” 
We now see why it is that the organs of gener- 
ation are imbued with so much power and energy, 
for it is in the seed therein contained that are 
gathered the first and last principles of man — the 
concentrated substance of the whole soul, from 
whence proceed the highest uses to the human 
race. Highest use is always attended with great- 
est pleasure — a benevolent provision of the Crea- 
tor to stimulate the performances of these uses. 
Hence also, when perversion takes place, and when 
it is carried to excess of mere sensual indulgence, 
those pleasures begin to pall, and finally to die out, 
and infuse disgust, just in proportion as the way is 
obstructed to the soul. How holy, then, is true 144 
LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF 
marriage, and what sources of divine life is it the 
medium of between the parties ! 
It is not, therefore, always necessary that the 
motive to such intercourse should be the procura- 
tion of offspring; though it must be confessed that 
this is the highest motive and the noblest use 
which can actuate the parties so associated. And 
it should always be held in remembrance, to re- 
deem us from any perversion or abuse of the mere 
animal nature. And it cannot be too strongly 
enforced, that any indulgence, from mere animal 
pleasure, is a prostitution of the high powers of 
humanity. It is this, and only this, from whence 
has emanated the excesses and sins of mankind, to 
a degree horrible to think of, which has filled the 
earth with evil. But an orderly intercourse, by 
the pure and true of heart, who would shun all 
mere sensuality as sin and abomination, I feel 
authorized to say need not always have for its 
motive the procuring of offspring, for the Creator 
has designed that such communication shall be the 
medium of a reciprocal, essential life between the 
parties ; and if it were not for the preponderance 
of the flesh, what potencies might not thus be 
imparted to the organic systems of each, which SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 
145 
should diffuse their healthful influence throughout 
body and soul, and promote new vigor, manhood 
and strength ! Yes, instead of weakness, weari- 
ness, and lassitude, did only love exist, not lust, 
and purity of intention, and were the marriage a 
true one, both the man and the woman would find 
an increased ability for all the functions and offices 
of life. But when so, the act would not be thought 
of at all from the mere animal nature, but would 
only be the gentle, unimpassioned tendency of the 
whole soul of love to ultimate itself in the body, 
for a mutual fulness and communion of being, 
while immediately after the act, more particularly, 
would be realized the interchange and coition of 
spirit, and the blending of both natures in that life 
which God hath designed. But let none take the 
advantage of these words for any immoderate or 
too frequent commerce, for I can assure them that 
humanity in general, at this day, is far too cor- 
rupt even to risk, to all eyes, the presentation 
of so much truth to their sight. I am writing 
for the pure-minded, and for those who wish to 
become so. vm. 
LAWS OF HEREDITARY DESCENT, FACTS, ETC., 
ILLUSTRATIVE. 
SPEAKING of the preparation of married part- 
ners for the holy act of child-begetting, 1 
know not if I have yet conveyed sufficient truth, 
or with sufficient plainness and force. The sub- 
ject is wrapped in so much delicacy to almost 
every mind — delicacy, I would remark, which 
comes from the evil state in which we all are — 
(for if we were simpler and purer, we could speak 
and write upon this subject with much more free- 
dom) that it is difficult to Tueet all classes with the 
same style and illustrations. I wish to speak more 
particularly of a pure seed — a “ holy seed,” as 
the Scriptures term it; for I am confident there is 
much truth here buried out of sight, which only 
needs to be presented in clear light, to beget new 
and deeper convictions, and possibly to influence 
some minds to a better practice. It is not new LAWS OF HEREDITARY DESCENT. 
147 
truth which we here claim to present, but old 
truth newly and freshly communicated. Though I 
have no doubt, to many minds some portions of it 
will be new. 
The prophet Malachi holds forth this language. 
Speaking of false and impure connections between 
husband and wife, he inquires — “And did not he 
[the Lord] make one ? Yet had he the residue of 
the spirit. And wherefore one ? That he might 
seek a godly seed.” Chap, ii., v. 15. The mean- 
ing of which, in one sense, is evidently this. God 
created by his immediate Spirit and direct power, 
one man and one woman, or, if you please, in the 
very beginning, man and woman united—Adam, 
or Man. But wherefore only one ? He could have 
created millions in the same way, speaking after 
the manner of men, as the literal sense always 
does, for He had the residue of the Spirit — all 
source and power and influence. Yet did He 
create only one. Why ? That He might have a 
godly seed. That is, as each individual was to 
become the inheritor of a peculiar genius from his 
natural parentage, fitted, more than the primeval 
germ could fit him, for the performance of a par- 
ticular use in the great family of man and in the 148 
LAWS OF HEREDITARY DESCENT, 
kingdom of angels above, so it was necessary that 
particular care be bestowed upon the seed — 
that parents should be careful to preserve it holy 
that God might be glorified, and man honored and 
uplifted in the long succession of an advancing 
race. Why, now, do we not pay more attention to 
it ? Have we become so thoroughly sunk in world- 
liness and sensuality, that we care nothing at all 
for the children we bring into the world,— that 
we do not even make that a consideration in mar- 
riage,— that we unite for convenience, for wealth, 
for selfish indulgence, for love indeed so far as it 
can be made to accord with these things, but with 
the understanding that one thing must at all events 
be kept out of the mind ; that is, the kind of chil- 
dren which we are to become instrumental in in- 
troducing to existence ? I know that some among 
us are not so thoughtless, but with the multitude, 
this is the very curse and sin that we groan under 
and are guilty of. It is a sin ; let it forever be so 
regarded; for “ the chief reason why marriages 
are so holy, is that they are the seminaries of the 
human race ,' and inasmuch as the angelic heaven 
is from the human race, they are also the semina- 
ries of heaven; consequently, by marriages not FACTS, ETC., ILLUSTRATIVE. 
149 
only the earths, but also the heavens are filled 
with inhabitants.” Let us, then, see the force 
of the prophet’s announcement concerning a 
“ godly seed.” And pardon me if I grow a little 
impatient here ; for I cannot contemplate this sub- 
ject with complacency. Behold our inconsistency! 
See how lordly man lets himself down in compar- 
ison with the beasts ! And if any argument were 
needed to set forth his own abasement, and to 
show the comparative estimate he places upon 
himself, let him find it here in the superior care 
and value he sets, in this respect, upon his cattle. 
For we acknowledge this principle and act upon 
it, in the rearing of our horses and oxen. The 
farmer might coax, and discipline, and train his 
cattle forever; if he did not improve the breed and 
proceed scientifically, he would only be laughed 
at. Why should not this hold true with human 
beings ? And why should not clergymen say more 
about it ? Plave they not the authority of the 
Scriptures? What of the “godly seed,” and of 
the “ generation of vipers ” ? —- of the “ seed of 
fevil-doers, children that are corrupters ” ? What 
of the whole record of tribes and generations of 
men, to whom, according to their “ seed/’ partic* 150 
LAWS OF HEREDITARY DESCENT, 
ular blessings or curses are awarded ? Ts not a 
large part of the whole Bible a record of God’s 
doings by particular people, and “ remnants,” and 
beginnings of nations and families ? Was not the 
servant of Abraham solemnly made to swear by 
the Lord, the God of heaven and earth, not to take 
a wife for Isaac his son, of the daughters of the 
Canaanites, but to go into his own country, and to 
his kindred ? And the special providence was put 
into requisition, of sending an angel with that ser- 
vant, to secure the purpose, and to prosper his 
way. And Paul quotes a passage from Isaiah, say- 
ing— “ Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a 
seed, we had been as Sodom, and been made like 
unto Gomorrah.” Why shall a clergyman, then — 
a teacher of holiness and the Scriptures, confine 
himself to conversions and spiritual influences after 
birth, and not step in here, at the sources and 
foundations of character, and unfold and enforce 
the most palpable, demonstrable, and radical laws 
of God and of salvation? Why not say — Behold 
the beasts of the field, how they grow. And is 
not a man better than a sheep? But oh, we have 
become so fashionably spiritual, that it doth not 
yet appear, that human intellect and morals de- FACTS, ETC., ILLUSTRATIVE. 
151 
pend so much upon analogous causes as the intel- 
lect and good qualities of a horse. A cow, or a 
goose, must bo improved in the stock ; but a man, 
or a woman, let them marry as they will, “ for bet- 
ter for worse, for richer for poorer, till death us do 
part,” and that is as far as the church generally 
can see. A second birth — a purely disconnected, 
post-natal process, — that is about all it recog- 
nizes ; and Christianity, which is law and philos- 
ophy throughout, when understood, and in the 
most intimate harmony with good hereditary phy- 
sical and psychological conditions, is belittled and 
put out of sight, or its excellence in this respect 
turned entirely over to the brute creation! 
We have spoken of a “godly seed,” let us now 
take an example from an ungodly one. And we 
will hit upon that one specimen of depravity — 
that one name, which has filled the world with 
horror, and at the very mention of which we seem 
to see a personification of all that is cruel and ter- 
rible. I mean the Emperor Nero, the monster of 
Roman antiquity. Here, the one condition of pa- 
rentage which is essential to highest excellence 
seems to have been reversed. Instead of both 
parents contributing of their united virtues and 152 
LAWS OF HEREDITARY DESCENT, 
powers to produce the most perfect offspring, both 
contributed of conspicuous evil. And thus the 
record runs through a continued series of black 
and infamous lineage. “Julia, the daughter of 
Augustus Csesar, and the great grandmother of 
Nero, was a woman of dissolute conduct, libidinous 
passions, and abandoned infamy. Her daughter 
Agrippina, possessed an uncontrollable and violent 
temper, and was insatiably ambitious of power. 
For her own aggrandizement she was ever ready 
to sacrifice the interests, or even the lives of her 
children. Her only redeemable quality was chas- 
tity; and, although Germanicus, ‘the worthiest 
son of the worthiest parents/ was her husband, 
her children appear to have inherited her fierce 
disposition. Caligula, that emperor of Rome who 
wished the Roman people had but one neck, that 
he might, at a blow, destroy the whole race, was 
one of them, and Agrippina, of infamous memory, 
the mother of Nero, was another. The paternal 
grandfather of Nero was Lucius Domitius yEno- 
barbus, a man of impetuous temper, violent, proud, 
extravagant and cruel. The life of his son Cneius 
Domitius, was a series of evil deeds; he married 
his cousin Agrippina, and used to remark, ‘ that FACTS, ETC., ILLUSTRATIVE. 
from himself and Agrippina, nothing good or val« 
uable' could come/ They were the parents of 
Nero, whose name is now another word for the 
most savage cruelty.” * 
And so we might go on — 
Tracing the poison through the human race, 
And, where the accusations heaviest run, 
Find some dark, fatal links, in that vast chain 
Which mercy only dares to contemplate 
Down to its fearful depths. 
Justice may contemplate it too, but only such as 
is thoroughly impregnated with mercy, and from 
the results of which we may learn both our duty 
and our safety. Seeing in this clear light what 
the lineage is, we may as well practise upon the 
law of causation here, as in our calculations of 
material science, only more thoroughly and per 
fectly so, in proportion as the results are more 
important; but with not a jot of abatement from 
our most practical freedom. 
The truth is, we do not realize the vast dispro- 
portion between the concerns of humanity in this 
direction, and the interests which we attach to 
almost any other subject of importance, the laws 
* Intellectual and Moral Qualities Transmissible. 154 
LAWS OF HEREDITARY DESCENT, 
and conditions of which are equally evident. And 
it is not the delicacy of the subject- alone; it is 
our absolute stolidity and unconsciousness, which 
keeps it out of the arena of popular discussion. 
How popular have we made almost every other 
subject ! As has been well observed, we fre- 
quently have public meetings of our citizens in 
various parts of the country, to discuss the great 
interests of agriculture; and our State Houses and 
public halls will be open, and the governors and 
chief men called to preside, while information is 
furnished and truth diffused, and the people more 
scientifically instructed in the best methods of 
raising sheep, and oxen, and corn, and grass, and 
cabbages; but who ever heard of a meeting of 
this kind for the introduction of a new and better 
style of humanity? Not meetings for education 
merely, and rescue from the miseries of the gener- 
ations that are born; but why not more primitive 
and original principles discussed? Why not the 
calling together of men, and women too, (for they 
may hold separate meetings if they choose) to 
earnestly consider and profoundly discuss, the 
marriage and parentage interest in all its rela- 
tions ? Mr. Combe well remarks, that if the same FACTS, ETC., ILLUSTRATIVE. 
155 
amount of knowledge and care which has been 
taken to improve the domestic animals, had been 
bestowed upon the human species, during the last 
century, there would not have been so great a 
number of moral patients for the lunatic asylums 
and the prisons, as there are at present. Why 
not, then, the best science collected, and the most 
fundamental and radical wisdom presented and 
diffused throughout the community? I can im- 
agine a meeting of this kind, of the most refined 
and beautiful order. If not in State Houses, or in 
public buildings, at first, in private halls and rooms 
where much could be said, and impressions made 
which could never be effaced, upon the hearts and 
minds of the fathers and mothers and young peo- 
ple of our land. 
“ Indeed,” says a writer on Intermarriage, Mr. 
Walker, of England, u it can be only passion, venal- 
ity, or pride, that can prevent man from doing, for 
his own progeny, that which natural and universal 
laws permit him to do for the progeny of every 
domesticated animal. The only reply that, under 
these circumstances of actual and daily demon- 
stration, he can make to the invitation of nature 
and science, is, that he prefers a blind passion to 156 
LAWS OF HEREDITARY DESCENT, 
an enlightened one,—brutal indulgence, succeeded 
by life-long disgust, to exquisite enjoyment and 
permanent happiness, — or money, a mere means 
of pleasure, at the cost of domestic misery — per- 
haps of conjugal or filial insanity, to actual pleas- 
ure for himself and all around him, as well as the 
progress of children in intellectual improvement 
and honorable arts — the sole means of abiding 
fortune, — or rank from which he may look up to 
those above, who despise and spit upon him be- 
cause he would vainly overtake them in their idiot 
scramble for a bubble, or down on those below, 
who therefore naturally hate him for his insolent 
assumption.” 
We shall institute practical measures, then, for 
this great object, of a kind and tendency propor- 
tioned to our faith and sincerity. And as to the 
means proposed above — popular discussions of 
this subject, it may not, I say, be made too public 
at first; the more delicate and private experiences 
may be made the subject of more private confer- 
ence; mothers may come together, and fathers 
may come together, in separate meetings: but 
there is much pertaining to the subject of mar- 
riage in general, to its spiritual as well as its FACTS, ETC., ILLUSTRATIVE. 
157 
physical relations, and a whole host of interesting 
and important facts relating to the state and con- 
dition of parents during the time preceding birth, 
which are so fatal and so wonderful, which may be 
preached or lectured on everywhere. And we 
make bold to say, until knowledge of this kind 
does get more popular, and men and women are 
disposed to act more nobly, with a reference to 
the peculiar honors and distinctions of humanity 
in this respect, above all other nature, the world 
will never realize the “millennium” so much spoken 
of, and will make but slow advances where it 
might make comparatively rapid marches, in the 
grand highway of human perfectibility. Human 
progress is slow, necessarily; but it need not be 
so stupidly and inhumanly slow. 
Now, the truth here set forth may be recognized 
and admitted and adopted. But it may meet with 
the old objection that it is altogether premature, 
too early, too pure and high to be made practi- 
cal with a generation of self-seekers, and a world 
swamped in earthliness, sensuality, and corruption. 
I am sorry to see so much truth in the objection. 
But all men are not fools, and some there are who 
always want to know the best and highest truths. 158 
LAWS OF HEREDITARY DESCENT, 
And therefore I say, say not that nothing can be 
done. I tell you much can be done. And it may 
be said of this as of all other subjects, — “They 
that have grace must be the salt of the earth.” 
Every true man and every true woman who will 
only see and acknowledge so much as is here put 
forth, even though they do not and cannot, from 
their associations, practise the full extent of it, 
yet still if they favor it — if they speak for it — if 
they do any thing, be it ever so little, (yet how 
much more they can do than they think of!) — 
every such person, I say, may thus do much to 
shame this wretched practice and delinquency of 
a world lying in wickedness, and elevate to their 
proper height the sublimest principles of human 
improvement, loveliness and joy. 
How, I am tempted to ask, is the world ever to 
rise to its proper heights of salvation and glory, 
without the adoption and practice of the main 
principle here set forth ? We speak emphatically 
to the Christian world. This is Avliat Dr. Bush- 
nell calls “ the out-populating power of the Chris- 
tian stock.” He devotes a most searching and 
admirable discourse to it. 11 Conversions from 
without,” he says, “ are to have their part in pre* FACTS, ETC., ILLUSTRATIVE. 
159 
paring it, [the day of millennial glory] but the con- 
summation hoped for is even impossible, as regards 
a third or fourth part of the race, save as it is 
reached by a populating process which enters 
them into life itself, through the gate of a sancti- 
fied infancy and childhood.” Notice that word — 
“ impossible.” 
Again, u whether the feeble and more abject 
races are going to be regenerated and raised up, 
is already very much of a question. What if it 
should be God’s plan to people the world with 
better and finer material ? Certain it is, whatever 
expectations we may indulge, that there is a tre- 
mendous overbearing surge of power in the Chris- 
tian nations, which, if the others are not speedily 
raised to some vastly higher capacity, will inevita- 
bly submerge and bury them forever.” 
And what is this supposed plan in the mind of 
God, for the peopling of the world with better 
and finer material? Simply, what we have advo- 
cated and set forth in this little treatise. It is to 
have the spiritual birth begun in the natural! But 
let the Doctor speak for himself. 
u Our only idea of [church] increase,” he says, 
“is of that which accrues by means of a certain 160 
LAWS OF HEREDITARY DESCENT, 
abrupt technical experience. Led away thus from 
all thought of internal growth in the church, 
efforts to secure conversions take an external char- 
acter, becoming gospel campaigns. Accretion dis- 
places growth. The church is gathered as a found- 
ling hospital; and lest it should not be such, its 
own children are reduced to foundlings. Imme- 
diate repentance proclaimed, insisted on, and real- 
ized in an abrupt change, proper only to those 
who are indeed aliens and enemies, is the only 
hope or inlet of the church. We cannot under- 
stand how the spiritual nation should grow and 
propagate, and become powerful within itself.” 
This is precisely the point in debate. And the 
only question is — how far can such an internal, 
spiritual-natural growth be carried, and what are 
the means in our control for the renovating of this 
whole process of natural generation by “ the wash- 
ing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy 
Ghost ” ? Surely there can be no end to the im- 
provements which may thus be inaugurated for 
the human race, and which may lay a foundation 
for education, refinement, spiritualization, glory and 
immortality, surpassing all our powers of present 
application, and all the preaching and activity FACTS, ETC., ILLUSTRATIVE. 
161 
of Christendom. Shall we not, then, have a new 
age for humanity, founded in more primitive prin- 
ciples, in a higher respect for law, and the nature 
of the supernatural, in marriage, and in God’s in- 
evitable fate? 
One more extract from the philosophic Doctor. 
“Consider a very important fact,” says he, “in 
human physiology, which goes far to explain, or 
take away the strangeness and seeming extrava- 
gance of the truth I am endeavoring to establish, 
viz., that qualities of education, habit, feeling, and 
character, have a tendency always to grow in, by 
long continuance, and become thoroughly inbred 
in the stock. We meet humble analogies of this 
fact in the domestic animals. The operations to 
which they are trained, and in which they become 
naturalized by habit, become predispositions, in a 
degree, in their offspring; and they, in their turn, 
are as much more easily trained on that account. 
The next generation are trained still more easily, 
till what was first made habitual finally becomes 
functional in the stock, and almost no training is 
wanted. That which was inculcated by practice 
passes into a tendency, and descends as a natural 162 
LAWS OF HEREDITARY DESCENT, 
gift, or endowment. The same thing is observa- 
ble, on a large scale, in the families of mankind.” 
Precisely so: and here we may notice only a 
few instances of how some particular intellectual 
trait has been distinctly traced in the offspring, 
as the result of habit or education in the parents 
age. “ It has been observed,” says Mr. Walker, the 
author on Intermarriage before quoted, “ that the 
child of a civilized European will acquire knowl- 
edge more readily than the offspring of an Ameri- 
can Savage; [as to so much, who could doubt!] 
while it is known that such offspring, though 
brought up from a very early age in the colleges 
of the United States, exhibit an almost irresistible 
desire to return to the forests, and recommence 
the wandering life. On the other hand, we are 
told that, in the voyage up the Missouri, by Clarke 
and Lewis, one of the company was the son of an 
Indian woman who had married a Frenchman, and 
that this half-Indian acquired the power of tracing 
animals through the trackless wood to any extent, 
— which his companions could not acquire. 
“ In a paper read to the Royal Society, by Mr. 
Knight, it was observed that, many years since, an 
old schoolmaster had told him, that in the co irse FACTS, ETC., ILLUSTRATIVE. 
163 
of his personal experience, lie had observed a re- 
markable difference in the capacities of children 
for learning, which was connected with the educa- 
tion and aptitude of their parents; that the chil- 
dren of people accustomed to arithmetic learned 
figures quicker than those of differently educated 
persons, while the children of classic scholars more 
easily learned Latin and Greek; and that, notwith- 
standing a few striking exceptions, the natural dul- 
ness of children born of uneducated parents was 
proverbial. 
“ Writing afterwards to Mr. Knight as to what 
appeared to be the striking and important applica- 
bilities of his paper, he, in his reply, favored me 
with the following illustrative remark: — 
<UI, seventy years ago, heard an old schoolmaster 
remark, in speaking of my late brother’s great 
facility in learning languages, [the distinguished 
Mr. Payne Knight is here alluded to] that, in fifty 
years’ experience, he had never seen a child of 
wholly illiterate parentage and ancestry, (such be- 
ing at that time very abundant) who could learn 
languages; meaning of course Latin and Greek.’” 
The above observations may meet with sceptical 
objections, when it is reflected how often it is that LAWS OF HEREDITARY DESCENT, 
very distinguished and literary men have sprung 
from obscure and uneducated parents. Instances 
are numerous in our own country, as every school- 
boy knows. And as to ancient times, says one, <lwe 
know that some of the greatest men in Greece 
were of the obscurest origin, and that foreign 
female slaves gave birth to many of them. A Ca- 
rian was the mother of Themistocles; a Scythian 
was that of Demosthenes; and a Thracian gave 
birth to Iphicrates and Timotheus ! On the other 
hand it is certain that the children of Socrates and 
Pericles were destined to stupidity and obscurity.” 
Again, it is asked by Lewes, in his Physiology of 
Common Life, with reference to the supposed su- 
periority of male parentage, — “ How was the 
mighty intellect of Thucydides left to be repre- 
sented by an idiotic Milesius, and a stupid Stepha- 
nus ? Where was the great soul of Oliver Cromwell 
in his son Pi chard ? Who were the inheritors of 
Henry IV. and Peter the Great? What were Shak- 
speare’s children, and Milton’s daughters ? What 
was Addison’s only son ? an idiot.” 
But these apparent exceptions to a general law 
have been contemplated all along from the begin- 
ning. They are generally accounted for by the FACTS, ETC., ILLUSTRATIVE. 
165 
circumstance that only one of the parents has 
been distinguished for greatness, or proficiency in 
any one thing, while the other was of feeble or 
common intellect — it may have been either the 
father or the mother. But where both parents 
have been thus distinguished, if there have been 
no modifying or obstructing causes, which there 
always are, to some extent, then the result in the 
offspring is found to be in consonance with a regu- 
lar law. The complications in the ancestry, and the 
particular modifying causes, are so numerous as to 
make it impossible to trace the whole of any one 
case, much less all cases. But the facts are so 
numerous, and so directly traced, than no one of 
any fair, extended, and impartial observation, (Mr. 
Thomas Buckle to the contrary notwithstanding !) 
will doubt the law, while the apparent exceptions to 
it may all be accounted for by counteracting causes 
in one or both of the parents, and sometimes sev- 
eral generations back in the ancestry. For there 
are apparent leaps, sometimes, of superior or infe- 
rior qualities, which have disappeared in one gener- 
ation, but will make their appearance two or three 
or four generations afterwards. These, with the 
supernatural causes before alluded to, will be suffi- 166 
LA TVS OF HEREDITARY DESCENT, 
cient in general to account for all anomalies. Take 
the following one fact, and how far does it go 
towards removing all the arguments drawn from 
the apparent exceptions! “ The most striking 
example known to us/’ says Lewes, “ is that of the 
family which boasted Jean Sebastian Bach as the 
culminating illustration of a musical genius, which, 
more or less, was distributed over three hundred 
Bachs, the children of very various mothers.” 
But why spend time to refute an objection which 
every farmer knows is reduced to nothing by the 
observations and experiments amongst his own 
stock ? 
And so of moral and spiritual qualities, which, 
as Dr. Bushnell truly says, by inference from the 
habits of trained animals, from being “ inculcated 
by practice, pass into a tendency, and descend as 
a natural gift, or endowment.” It is wonderful, 
too, how quick the transmission may be made. 
“Certain it is,” says Walker, “that families, by 
intermarriages founded on rational principles, and 
in conformity with the natural laws so clearly estab- 
lished, as prevailing equally among men and lower 
animals, may, surely, easily, and quickly, (some in 
the first, others in their second generation) raise FACTS, ETC., ILLUSTRATIVE. 
167 
themselves, in some at least of their members, from 
deformity to beautiful organization, from disease 
to health, and from stupidity to high mental abil- 
ity.”— “A lady with whom I was acquainted,” 
says another writer, “ and who possessed great 
wealth, passed her nights in gaming: she died 
young from pulmonary disease. Her eldest son 
was equally addicted to play, and he also died of 
consumption at the same age as his mother. His 
daughter inherited the same passion and the same 
disease.” 
Here we may remark, too, how long the quali- 
ties so transmitted continue to perpetuate them- 
selves. They are very easily and quickly trans- 
mitted, but how long they last! “We know,” says 
Haller, “ a very remarkable instance of two noble 
females, who got husbands on account of their 
wealth, although they were nearly idiots, and from 
whom this mental defect has extended for a cen- 
tury into several families, so that some of all their 
descendants still continue idiots in the fourth and 
even in the fifth generation.” 
But we might fill a large volume with cases 
illustrative; we have probably given enough. 
How evident it is that both the intellectual, and 168 
LAWS OF HEREDITARY DESCENT, 
the moral and spiritual qualities, are transmissible 
by an easy and even a quick descent; and what 
an argument may be drawn from this for the tre- 
mendous responsibility that rests upon us to see 
to this more fully, and not fritter away our efforts 
at reform and regeneration by mere “ gospel cam- 
paigning,” to the neglect of building up the spir- 
itual nation from within, by propagation from a 
“ godly seed ”! Why will we not realize that all 
our habits — all our every-day practice — a thou- 
sand moods and influences which we suffer to 
affect us, become inwoven into the texture and 
substance of the life of those who are dependent 
upon us for their existence, especially when that 
experience is predominant in any kind during the 
period between conception and birth ? They may 
be very easily generated into us, and in a very 
short time ; but if they are bad, they are very 
hard to regenerate out of us, and require years of 
suffering and trial. I am the father of four chil- 
dren. And I can see, in every one of them, (if I 
make any exception it is of him who passed so 
early into the spiritual world that his particular 
traits were not fully developed) the peculiar char- 
acter stamped upon them — organized into them, FACTS, ETC., ILLUSTRATIVE. 
169 
from the states and influences and circumstances 
which were operative with the parents at the time 
of conception, and during the whole period of 
gestation. The record of these peculiarities from 
similar causes in other families is too common to 
enlarge upon. IX. 
OTHER FACTS, MARRIAGE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 
THERE are other facts which may be adduced 
for the illustration of the same general prin- 
ciple. I refer now to illegitimate children, and to 
the marrying of cousins and near relatives. It is a 
common observation that children born out of wed- 
lock are frequently remarkable for their bright- 
ness. They are not particularly distinguished for 
good morals, (yet sometimes they may be) but 
they have frequently a bright, quick turn, and are 
apt to be gay, buoyant, quick-witted, and active. 
What is the reason ? What but the fact that their 
dishonored parentage had at least one advantage 
over that of many who are more correct in morals, 
but who drag themselves to stupidity by over-in- 
dulgence and many enervating habits, and in that 
state go stumbling and blundering to the act of 
procreation ? Or they contract a habit of such 
indifference to the whole married state — it is 171 
OTHER FACTS. 
such a complete bog and flaccidity to them, that 
the active powers they put forth have nothing fre- 
quently of the soul in them; it is mere bodily 
habit; and their offspring are distinguished for 
the same dull qualities. Whereas, in the illegiti- 
mate child we may see frequently the effects of 
such gladness, sprightliness, and exhilaration, as 
entered into that forbidden compact. The only 
argument to be drawn from this is — let the good 
that is in the evil speak to the evil that is in the 
good. And how many such lessons may be learned 
from the “ children of this world ” ! 
“ Being with a friend, about thirty years ago,” 
says Mr. Knight, as quoted by Walker, “shooting 
grouse upon a Welsh Mountain, we were joined by 
a native of the country, who exhibited, with the 
manners and character of a buffoon, very great 
powers of combining ideas, and who possessed a 
good deal of a kind of irregular and uninstructed 
wit. I pointed out to my friend the difference 
between him and the other peasants, and observed 
that, on inquiry, he would prove to be the son of 
an educated male parent. It proved, upon inquir- 
ing, that he was a gentleman’s bastard. 
“ Being in my parish church, about ten years 172 
OTHER FACTS, 
ago, a little girl, in repeating her catechism, got 
through her part in less than half the time that 
her companions did, and without missing, or hesi- 
tating about, a single word. She was wholly un- 
known to me; but I whispered to Mrs. Knight, 
‘That girl is a gentleman’s natural daughter ’; [as 
illegitimate children were then called] and so she 
proved to be.” 
It is probable also, that the exercise of intellect 
and tact, quite active in the guilty parties on such 
occasions, to avoid exposure, to prevent jealousy, 
and to carry out their secret intentions with suc- 
cess and adroitness, in addition to more powerful 
love, tends to the quickening of this species of 
intellect in such offspring. The whole of which 
may be turned to an argument for virtue, by any 
who choose to reverse the process. 
In the marriage of cousins, and other near rela- 
tives, we have another illustration of the potent 
alchemy of matrimonial unions. The fact of the 
imbecility, insanity, or eccentricity of the children 
of such connections, is universally recognized — 
with many exceptions. Still the result is so con- 
spicuous as to reveal a law here, though many 
cannot tell the precise nature of the law, or what MARRIAGE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 
173 
is the philosophy of so melancholy a result. The 
simple truth is, in these cases, there 13 too much 
of one thing. There is not sufficient variety of 
spiritual and physical substance, powers and facul- 
ties of mind, sentiments and affections of the moral 
nature, to produce a strong and healthy organism. 
Power and amplitude is made up of variety in unity. 
The uniting of too similar substances does not pro- 
duce strength and efficiency, like the union of 
many and various, when they are susceptible of 
that union. This may be partly illustrated by con- 
fining any person, for a long period of time, to the 
performance of only one thing, which, though it 
may tend to perfection in that thing, yet will re- 
duce his general ability, and enfeeble him with 
monotony. But in the sexual union of such qual- 
ities, the effect is paralyzing to the whole nature, 
because the whole nature is concerned in it. 
There may indeed be, sometimes, (very rarely, 
however, we suspect) a tendency to an abnormal 
preponderance or over-activity in some one par- 
ticular faculty, but if so, it is only such as is mor- 
bid and of the nature of disorder, as in prodigies 
frequently, who are oftentimes produced from an 
over-strain, or great intensity of application by one 174 
OTHER FACTS, 
or both of the parents at the time of conception or 
gestation. But when so, the distinction of faculty 
or genius is not apt to last. It will be all out- 
grown or overgrown in the course, sometimes, of 
a very few years. Those examples of superior or 
wonderful development which endure, and con- 
tinue to characterize the person through life, are 
such as have been produced, not by some mere 
temporary intensity of action in the parentage, 
but where greatness of character, and full, normal 
strength of organic development, and intensity 
too, perhaps, have all existed to produce their 
corresponding result. 
It may be remarked too, that it is not cousins 
and near relatives alone, who thus exemplify this 
law, and are punished with imbecility in the off- 
spring. Any persons, whether blood relatives or 
not, who are too similar in their mental qualities, 
will produce the same results. Cases are well 
known of this kind, thus demonstrating the uni- 
versality and inevitability of the law, and showing 
the high moral and matrimonial importance of the 
whole subject. On the same principle, there may 
be many cases of such family relationship where 
the parties are sufficiently different to enter into MARRIAGE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 
175 
the marriage union without any evil results of the 
nature alluded to. So that there may be excep- 
tions to this, as to almost every other rule ; while 
at the same time, at the bottom, there is operative 
a principle of truth. There may be yet other 
causes operating in the marriage of these family 
connections, the nature of which we are not yet 
fully acquainted with. The simple fact is, how- 
ever, as it appears to us, there is not difference, 
not variety enough, in such cases, ordinarily speak- 
ing, necessary to excitement and the reproductive 
power. Man naturally seeks, in companionship 
and in all friendship, not only for qualities similar 
enough to his own to attract him by the necessary 
sympathy, and inspire confidence; but for some- 
thing different, something new, which is capable 
of exciting him. And it is well remarked, that 
“this conforms to the fundamental difference of 
the sexes.” Where this law is in action between 
two beings conjoined in matrimony, there is of 
necessity more stimulus, more love, and it is ob- 
served that where such qualities exist, marriages 
are generally more prolific. 
It is no detraction from the force of this position, 
that similarity of character, tastes, and tendencies, 176 
OTHER FACTS. 
is necessary to a proper and happy marriage. 
Some similarity of course there must be, in order 
either to happiness or productiveness. And, there- 
fore, when we announce, as we frequently do, the 
law of “opposites” for marriage, it is to be under- 
stood that opposites are not necessarily contraries. 
We don’t want contrary qualities and dispositions 
united in marriage, for these make jargon and all 
strife. But there are certain opposites, in intellect 
and in tastes, which inspire mutual love and esteem. 
These draw from each other, and reciprocate mu- 
tually what either alone has not. The reader may 
easily fancy the particulars, to illustrate, and suit 
himself. I will mention but one illustration in 
principle. The two positive or the two negative 
poles of two magnets are contraries, and they 
repel each other. But the positive and the nega- 
tive are opposites, and they attract and unite ! 
Concerning the too great sameness of qualities 
in near relatives and others, nothing can be more 
melancholy than the history of the royal families 
and ancient dynasties of the old world. They in- 
variably tend to imbecility and insanity, and are 
the loudest protestations to heaven against this 
violation of the laws of Nature. Such instances, MARRIAGE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 
177 
for example, as George III., Paul of Russia, the 
late sovereigns of Denmark and Portugal, the 
deposed king of Sweden, &c., and, as it has been 
remarked, “ a fourth or fifth of the kings then occu- 
pying the thrones of Europe ! and consequently a 
proportion of mental disease far greater than can 
be exemplified in any rank of society.” 
“ The marriages of high rank and of hereditary 
wealth,” says Sir Anthony Carlisle, “are gener- 
ally concocted in their muniment - rooms, where 
the estates of heirs and heiresses are entailed, 
together with the personal peculiarities, moral de- 
fects, and hereditary diseases of each family, and 
perpetuated as far as law, sheep-skins, signings 
and seals can extend them. Hence the frequent 
termination of such inbred races; while, in every 
ancient village, of considerable, though not shift- 
ing population, the names of humble families have 
continued for more ages, although ill recorded, than 
those of the proudest gentry.” 
Now, shall we not, in our free and democratic 
America, avoid, as it becomes us, the sin of similar 
violations of the laws and conditions under which 
we are living ? What can be more honorable, or 
more worthy of rational human beings, than to 178 
OTHER FACTS. 
strive for that permanency in all that pertains 
to true and dignified happiness, intellectual and 
moral improvement, in the arts and conveniences 
and uses of elegant and civilized life, — that 
abiding fortune in families and lineage, and that 
marked respect which is always conferred upon 
such distinction, which is only secured by obe- 
dience to these fundamental laws ? And does it 
not all point to the one principal thing which 
should be uppermost in the minds of all who are 
contemplating any connection of this nature ? — I 
mean the special sanctity of a true and proper 
marriage. But, on the other hand, marriage that 
is not proper — marriage that is rushed into with 
the indifference of animals, or thoughtless, worldly- 
minded men and women, — there are not words to 
express the sin and guilt, and enduring conse- 
quences of the act to unborn millions. 
And why shall we not, let me ask, on the score 
of mere enjoyment to ourselves — for the conscious 
and noble satisfaction derived to wedded life from 
an interesting and beautiful family of children, 
think more of the character of those partners 
which we take into this holy alliance ? It is not 
all of married joy to reciprocate the love and com* MARBIAGE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 
179 
panionship of the one chosen out of all the world 
to share with us life’s destiny. Indeed, that hap 
piness is frequently and grossly marred by those 
offshoots of the conjugal union which spring up 
around us in the house, and are the perpetual at- 
tendants of the family circle. And who has not 
frequently been shocked, and sometimes where he 
least expected it, at the combination of fearful ele- 
ments existing in half a dozen little representa- 
tives of domestic life and endearment ? How 
unlike the vision which once early dawned upon 
the youthful pair ! How very dissimilar, to the 
scenes of bliss sometimes foreshadowed as of heav- 
en’s own likeness! These children are just as 
likely to be little, ungovernable pests of passion 
and ill-temper, surly, spiteful, daringly disobedient 
and hateful, as they are to be lovely, amiable, beau- 
tiful in spirit as in body. All this difference may 
come of the different character of her or him you 
take to your bosom. Talk not of education now. 
I acknowledge it in all its force. But we are here 
looking at other truths. Now I say, who can help 
admiring, and almost adoring, such a family of 
children as is sometimes presented to our view ? 
uMaxima debeturpueris reverentia”—the greatest 180 
OTHER FACTS, 
reverence is due to childhood — sang the Roman 
poet Juvenal two thousand years ago ; and surely, 
in the present light of an advanced and spiritual 
Christianity, the sentiment is none the less beauti- 
ful, and none the less touching to our finer and 
higher sensibilities. How beautifully the work of 
education goes on in such a family! And when 
we view all the natural qualities — the loveliness, 
the amiability, the innocence, the ready respect 
and honor manifested for the parents, the aptitude 
to learn, and the Christian graces and accomplish- 
ments that have been so felicitously grafted upon 
such a stock, what a benediction it is, and how 
large a portion of the happiness of married life 
it is — such a circle of beautiful attendants ! I 
have in my mind now, more than one family of 
children who have excited my almost envious ad- 
miration, and whom, all unknown to them or the 
parents, I have remembered with secret blessings 
ever since I have known them. The God of heaven 
be praised, that so abundant a spring of heavenly 
felicity is yet left upon this poor earth of ours ! 
And now, 0 man ! will you not think of this in 
your youthful matrimonial alliances? 0 woman! 
remember that it is not him alone, whom you have MARRIAGE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 
181 
honored with your love, — it is not this, nor all 
that can grow out of it, which constitutes by far 
the all of conjugal felicity. Your fireside is to.be 
blessed with the choicest benedictions of heaven. 
Your table is to be surrounded with images and 
patterns of yourselves. Your whole life, for 
twenty, thirty, forty years, is to be influenced 
very largely by the children you have brought 
into the world. Sooner or later the married pait- 
ners must be severed. Still the children may sur- 
vive. They may bless you in loneliness and in 
your declining years, or they may be a weight 
upon your spirit little accordant with your hopes 
or desires. And the fate of those children too, 
for time and eternity, — why will you not think of 
it, nor ever dream of separating it from the all- 
important consideration of Marriage ? 
Here let a remark be made from common obser- 
vation. It is observed that, in a general way, in 
common society, men frequently marry from the 
love of sex, and too often from mere natural ex- 
citement; and girls marry from social influence 
(not so much, at least, from the love of sex), from 
the dread of a single life, for protection, for a 
home, from love of approbation, ambition, &c. The 182 
OTHER FACTS, 
thought of parentage is pretty much out of tho 
minds of each. It is even distasteful, at times. 
They dread the trouble of it — would be glad to 
get rid of it. And how often do they take special 
pains to do so ! Now, the time is coming when 
this matter will be very much changed. The idea 
of parentage will become prominent. It will be 
thought of with great solemnity. And it is for 
this purpose that I write, that I may contribute 
something to this great end. Parentage ? chil- 
dren ? why! what dread incubus from the infernal 
regions can have arisen, to quench this thought 
from the minds of human beings ? I repeat, the 
time is coming when this subject will be thought 
of with great solemnity, and when it cannot and 
shall not be shut out from the contemplation of the 
youthful candidates, nor the actual participants, of 
matrimony. 
Since writing the above, we have received a 
letter from a spiritual friend in Indiana, touching 
upon this very subject, from which we make the 
following extract. 
“ I wish to make a suggestion in reference to 
your new work, which, if thorough on the subject, 
will be a most important one. Pre-natal conditions MARRIAGE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 
are really the most vital to the character of off- 
spring, as I know by much experience. But there 
is a crime against nature almost universally preva- 
lent in this country, which I have ever regarded 
with the greatest abhorrence, and that is, the sys- 
tematic effort to avoid having children — the de- 
stroying, at the outset, the good natural use of 
marriage, and of course destroying in a corre- 
sponding degree the spiritual use. 
11 Self-abuse and legal prostitution lie at the root 
of the feeble natural and moral constitutions of 
children. The natural character of the child is 
determined by the condition of the parents at the 
time of coition, when conception takes place [see, 
however, page 127]; and although the germ vessel 
is from the father, yet its form (which is the recip- 
ient of the soul) is doubtless modified by the 
female influences over him. Noav, if one or both 
are just calculating and figuring for the purpose 
of gratifying their lust, without looking at all to 
the legitimate ends of marriage, what but feeble 
constitutions and perverted proclivities can be 
given to the offspring ? And what is marriage 
but legal prostitution when entered into with a 184 
OTHER FACTS, 
view to sexual intercourse, without any regard to 
the high and holy uses of marriage ? 
“ Do probe this damning sin to the quick ! Staid 
New England is full of it. Sometimes I think it 
has been permitted by the Divine Providence in 
order to root out this excitable, money-getting, 
godless generation from the earth; and it is fast 
doing its work.” 
Yerily, verily. And in precise proportion to 
this unnatural aversion to having children, do 
those children, when by any considered ill luck 
they are born, bring with them into the world, as 
before observed more particularly, the same pre- 
ponderance of mere lust with which they were 
begotten, the same predominance of the whole ani- 
mal nature and the absence of all that is spiritual, 
perhaps the same hatred of life which the parents 
cherished towards them before they were born, 
and a thousand morbid feelings of disgust, and 
melancholy, and tiresomeness, for all that would 
otherwise sweeten existence, and create joy and 
thankfulness of spirit. Let it be remembered ; let 
it be shunned 1 X. 
DESTINY AND TEE HUMAN WILL. 
I LOVE to speak of Destiny, but I love also 
to speak of destiny that we can control. In 
fact, there is no destiny, like this we are speaking 
of, that our agency does not form a part of. The 
two are wonderfully united in God’s perfect plan. 
And so I apply it to this subject as to all others. 
Take it on any ground,—the idea of the extremest 
fate, or the absurdest exaggeration of free-will, it 
all becomes practical to him who comprehends his 
real duties. He is not troubled either with one 
extreme or the other. He unites them both, or 
forgets them both, in the one over-mastering 
thought of duty. We can listen, then, to such 
expressions of truth as the following, with pleas- 
ure and complacency. We may even profit by 
them if we consider them aright. How practical 
they are, and how admonishing! 
“We may,” (says a good observer — Hazlitt, I 186 
DESTINY AND THE HUMAN WILL. 
believe,) “ with instruction and opportunity, mend 
our manners, or else alter them for the -worse, ‘ as 
the flesh and fortune shall serve ’; but the charac- 
ter, the internal, original bias, remains always the 
same, true to itself to the very last — 
‘And feels the ruling passion strong in death!’ 
The greater or less degree of animal spirits — of 
nervous irritability — the complexion of the blood 
— the proportion of‘hot, cold, moist, and dry, four 
champions fierce that strive for master}7 ’ — the 
Saturnine and the Mercurial — the disposition to 
be affected by objects near, or at a distance, or not 
at all—to be struck with novelty, or to brood over 
deep-seated impressions — to indulge in laughter 
or in tears — the leaven of passion or of prudence 
that tempers this frail clay, is born with us, and 
never quits us. In this sense, ‘ the child’s the 
father of the man,’ sure enough. The color of our 
lives is woven into the fatal thread at our births ; 
our original sins and our redeeming graces are in- 
fused into us; nor is the bond that confirms our 
destiny ever cancelled. 
‘ Beneath the hills, amid the flowery groves, 
The generations are prepared; the pangs, 
The internal pangs, are ready; the dread strife 
Of poor humanity’s afflicted will 
Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny.’ DESTINY AND THE HUMAN WILL. 
187 
The 1 winged wounds ’ that rankle in our breasts 
to our latest day, were planted there long since, 
ticketed and labelled on the outside, in small but 
indelible characters, written in our blood.” 
But this, I say, is destiny connected very largely 
with our agency. Nor is it at all discouraging to 
human virtue to be told that, either way — in the 
l ight or in the wrong, if we once set ourselves 
fairly in the road, Nature assists us by this power- 
ful league with her fatality. All good calculators, 
everywhere, in every thing, only succeed by avail- 
ing themselves of this sure and inevitable connec- 
tion of the chain of human events. We would 
not break it for all the theories in the world. 
There is one fact, however, that may be noticed 
here, and that is, the relation that the exertion of 
our own will bears to this seeming hereditary fa- 
tality. It is sometimes said that notwithstanding 
all the difference in the natural gifts of men, by 
which some are elevated to eminence and others 
kept in obscurity, or some tend to vice and others 
to virtue, it is, after all, the indomitable will and 
industry that some men exhibit, that gains for 
them their distinction. And so it is; this is the 
secret of many a fortune, and many a celebrity, 188 
DESTINY AND THE HUMAN WILL. 
even with moderate talents; while very great tal- 
ents without this will frequently turn out but 
splendid failures, exciting the pity of every be- 
holder. And how often it is the candid confession 
of men of extensive reputation for genius and 
talent, that, if they have accomplished any thing 
worthy of this laudation, it is their persistent in- 
dustry and application, and use of every moment 
of time, and not any genius that they are con- 
scious of, which has wrought these wonders and 
given them their fame. 
But is it not strange that it no more frequently 
occurs to our minds, that this will, and power and 
disposition to apply one’s self, is itself a talent, and 
as often conferred at birth as any other gift? Is it 
supposable that the great and indomitable will of 
Bonaparte, or Luther, or Gen. Grant, or Andrew 
Jackson, was a thing of entire and voluntary ori- 
gin with them? Or that our great scholars who 
achieve so much by patience, and perseverance, 
and unflagging industry, — Parker, for instance, 
or Prescott, or Everett, or Agassiz,— that their 
will and energy was not as much born in them as 
any other talent they possess? Much may have 
been acquired: we do not dispute this: all we DESTINY AND THE HUMAN WILL. 
189 
say is, as much may be inherited as the starting 
point of that acquisition, as of any other faculty. 
True it is, that one, at least, of the very celebri- 
ties here mentioned is said to have struggled all 
his lifetime against an inactive disposition, or an 
aversion to work. But it seems the work came, 
and the will prevailed ! Now, I am no metaphysi- 
cian to deny, or even to disparage, our most divine 
and distinguished faculty — free moral and intel- 
lectual agency, as to all its practical and substantial 
reality; and without getting at all at loggerheads 
here with the philosophers or the divines, be- 
cause there is no need of it, I affirm that, in so 
much as the hereditary is concerned — in so much 
as our will is a fact at all, of any kind, it is often- 
times the chief talent — the chief genius that the 
man by birth inherits ! A tremendous will is born 
in him. And it fires up all the other faculties, 
and puts them in motion. Why — if we should 
go into a philosophy here as to what the will itself 
in reality is, we should find it was made up very 
largely of those very faculties, — that each of 
them — each intellectual and moral and affectional 
power of the soul was itself a will — and they all 
combine in so many little wills to help make ono 190 
DESTINY AND THE HUMAN WILL. 
great one, to urge the man on to the gratification 
of the whole nature. Is there such a thing in 
man as a will— a thing not connected with any 
other faculty or feeling at all, only by proximity, 
whose office and function it is to say, go here, go 
there, don’t do it, do it, go on, stop? If there is, 
we have not discovered it; and should it at any 
time appear, it would undoubtedly be more like 
Will-o’-the-wisp, only not so luminous, than any 
other imaginary thing! The will, as we see it, 
is the tendency of all the faculties, sentiments, 
and affections of the mind, singly or combined, 
wholly or in part, to exert themselves. And it is 
stronger or weaker, according as these faculties, 
sentiments, and affections are greater or less, 
quicker or slower by the temperament. True, 
the moral and affectional nature is more generally 
spoken of as the seat of the will, and the great 
impelling powers are really there; and this higher 
nature can sometimes control the lower with a will 
of superior power. It could always, were our na- 
ture in its true order. But there is a will of intel- 
lect as well as of heart; of reason and mathematr 
ics, as of vice or virtue; of poetry as well as 
feasting: and the intellectual faculties are so DESTINY AND THE HUMAN WILL. 
191 
strong and active that we might imagine them 
to will themselves into action, without any moral or 
afiectional nature attached to them, could they so 
exist: but the “will” — that little or big thing 
which metaphysicians and common people so fre- 
quently call the will, which is not any of these, 
but something that speaks to all these with the 
authority of a master, is nowhere to be found !* 
Now, therefore, speaking of hereditary qualities 
only, how absurd it is to say that a man is not so 
much dependent, for his success, on these, as on 
the will he puts forth of himself, his industry, per- 
severance, &c.! For the truth is, these are quali- 
ties as much from the hereditary as any talent lie 
is gifted with. And the more talents he inherits 
— the greater mass of brain and spirit he is born 
with, the more will he has, for the will is made up 
of all this. True, he may not inherit so much of a 
particular part of the brain, or of the propelling 
and afifectional nature, and so not be distinguished 
* Commonly speaking, I know that the human soul is made up of Will and 
Understanding; that the whole of the understanding is a thing separate 
from the whole of the will; and that the intellect of man receives its tire 
and energy from the affections flowing into it: but that alters not the 
main position taken above, as the will, even in this sense, is made up of 
several different and specific sentiments and affections, and the above 
illustration remains substantially true. 192 
DESTINY AND THE HUMAN WILL. 
for much of what we generally call will. That 
would be his misfortune. But then he might be 
just as likely to inherit more of that particular 
nature. This would be his gain. The simple 
truth is, whatever is the character of his will, it 
is as much of a talent that he can be born with 
as any other gift of genius ; and hence the im- 
mense importance of our whole subject, even with 
reference to that which is so apt to be thought 
not to belong to it at all. It belongs to it pre- 
eminently ! and consecrates and gives activity to 
all the genius and talent we possess. XL 
PHILOSOPHY OF MORAL AND SPIRITUAL 
INFLUENCE. 
LET us now turn again, for a few moments, to 
the subject of organization in the spirit and 
body of man. We said in the commencement of this 
treatise, that probably it was generally assented 
to now, by rational thinkers on this subject, that 
the spirit, being substantial, must have some form 
and organism. We shall proceed here upon this 
assumption. And now concerning that organism 
as it affects our moral and religious characters. 
Moral and spiritual influence is a matter which is 
on everbody’s lips, but few are disposed to inquire 
into its psychological conditions. Let us look a 
little more closely to it. And let us speak in all 
simplicity, not as to metaphysicians, but to plain, 
common men and women. Is there an emotion, 
moral feeling, or impulse, stirred in the heart of 
man by any outward influence, say by reading or 194 
PHILOSOPHY OF 
by preaching, which does not take effect in the 
very substance of the soul? What is moral feeling? 
It is a felt motion or action, more or less correct 
and harmonious, as the fine particles of that sub- 
stance vibrate or move thus in the soul. What is 
a thought ? It is the action of that substance as 
it is influenced either from within or without, by 
some exciting cause, and forms a picture or im- 
press of whatever the subject may be, in itself. 
I go not into particulars of mental philosophy, for 
it is not needed. I only avoid the nothingisms of 
the popular abstractionists by giving to every thing 
a substance and a form. Now I say, when we 
speak to each other, and excite each other’s 
thoughts and feelings, that mental movement is 
wholly dependent on the substantial stuff that 
glows and trembles within. Clairvoyants will tell 
you that there is distinctly visible, when two per- 
sons are thus in contact, or when a whole assem- 
bly is addressed by one man, an absolute flux and 
reflux of living particles, as of electricity or 
magnetism. It cannot be all of the body. “It 
certainly is agreeable to reason,” says Lord Bacon, 
“ that there are some light effluxions from spirit to 
spirit, when men are in presence one with another, MORAL AND SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 
195 
as well as from body to body.” — “ Sympathies 
and antipathies,” says Swedenborg, “ are nothing 
else than exhalations of affections from minds 
which affect one another, according to similitudest 
and excite aversion according to dissimilitudes. 
These, although they are innumerable, and are not 
sensibly perceived by any sense of the body, are 
yet perceived by the sense of the soul as one.” 
According to this very rational account, let it now 
be observed that every such excitement or mo- 
tion of the fine substance thus moved, directly 
alters, in some degree, the relative position of the 
particles. And this is moral influence ! This is 
mental action in general. This is the effect of 
eloquence, preaching, or strong appeals of any 
kind, which move the heart and fire the brain, and 
produce conviction and conversion. I do not say 
that the substance which so acts is all in the indi- 
vidual soul or souls; of course there is an influx 
from extraneous and divine sources ; but I say, un- 
less there is some such action in the soul, there is 
no way at all of accounting for mental movement 
and change. We cannot think a thought, or feel 
an emotion, ever so slight, without changing, in 
some imperceptible degree, the very particles 196 
PniLOSOPIIT OF 
which are submitted to this vibration. Take a 
familiar instance even from material instruments. 
Ole Bull once took great pains to procure some 
pieces of the wood of an old violin which had 
been long in use, with which to mend his own. 
He assigned as the reason, that the very vibrations 
of many years’ playing had altered the character 
or susceptibility of the wood. It was better than 
any new, or any old which had not been submitted 
to this influence. It had probably acquired, in the 
internals of its fibrous structure, some musical or 
harmonious arrangement of its particles. Or at 
least, to come down to the crudest capacity, it 
was more like a violin than though it had been 
used for a meat-axe; and the great musician had 
some correct instinct in so regarding it. 
It is just so with the human brain, and of the 
more interior human brain, or spirit. Preaching, 
or talking, or giving good lessons, moves this fine 
substance which constitutes the spiritual organ of 
thought and feeling, by somewhat of influx from 
the person who addresses, and by other spiritual 
and material agencies connected with the parties; 
and if continued, persevered in, in the right way, 
the effect must be lasting and beneficial. It is just MORAL AND SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 
197 
like bending an elastic rod: keep bending it, and 
it will stay bent. And so many people are re- 
formed by purely moral influence. And hence, by 
the way, it is oftentimes so hard to change a man’s 
opinions, or produce any considerable effect upon 
him. His mind is formed. All its little vesicles 
are substantially fixed and set in a particular di- 
rection against you. It is like so many cups or 
receivers all turned the wrong way, and he can 
get nothing from you. Or, it is like buckets up- 
side-down when it rains ! Such a man is not open 
to influx, or influence as we call it, and in order to 
change him you have got to alter the forms of his 
mind. And this frequently is a long, hard work. 
Other men, more flexible, pliant, susceptible, may 
receive impressions more readily, and undergo 
changes more rapidly. 11 Clay in the hands of the 
potter,” sure enough. Not only the more fixed 
substances of the mind, but the fine circulating 
spiritual fluids, we may conceive to have acquired 
a different motion from repeated application and 
addresses. This, I say, is moral influence. I do 
not overlook the Spirit of God. That operates 
in the same way. It is literally 11 poured out ” —■ 
not from the skies down through the natural air 198 
PHIL OS0PITY OF 
but from tlie Divine Mind, in an interior way, to 
the souls of men — upon all who will receive it. 
And there are no influences so refined and unsub- 
stantial as to amount to the vacuum of popular 
theology. 
Said Edward Everett, speaking of the alliance 
of the corporeal and spiritual principles of man,— 
u I do not know whether the pure, ethereal essence 
itself (at least so far as we can comprehend it, 
which is but faintly) ought more to excite our ad- 
miration, than this most wondrous compound of 
spirit and matter.” But what if it should turn out 
that this most wondrous compound of spirit and 
matter is but a complication — a union by de. 
gree, (degrees, however, far different from what 
we crudely consider them) of the two extremes of 
one only original substance ? Such a union could 
not exist unless there was a secret and powerful 
affinity in essence and in nature. But although 
thus united, they are still so different, in their 
acquirements and capabilities, that one can drop 
by death into the grave, and the other ascend to 
immortality. * 
* It seems necessary to say here, in reference to this much contemplated 
and unsettled subject, that, although as observed at tli« commencement MORAL AND SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 
199 
From the whole, we may acquire some better 
idea of the supreme importance of good organic 
conditions in the soul and body. If the soul is an 
of this volume, matter is to be thought of as proceeding from God by 
‘“discrete” degrees, yet there cannot properly be said to be a time when 
it did not exist. From all past eternity, to our most rational conception, 
the Deity is to be thought of as having an external, material envelope, so to 
speak, though without any attempt on our part to define that substance, 
or to compare it with anything that we in our present state are familiar 
with, because we know that matter is capable of existing under many 
different conditions. But a certain material envelope, or external body, it 
seems there must have been, else we are reduced to the absurdity of sup- 
posing that, on a time, matter was produced as an outbirth from pure 
spirit, — which of course would leave the Deity so much less in quantity I 
The resort to infinity does not remedy the matter in the least j it only be- 
clouds it. The idea of diminished quantity will enter into our concep- 
tions in just that proportion that we say matter, in time, was discreted 
from spirit. If we say that it was not discreted, but that Deity had power 
to originate it in some marvellous manner from his own spiritual sub- 
stance as a groundwork, without, however, subtracting any portion from 
Himself, then I say, in just the proportion that the marvel operated, 
or in just that extent in which a substance was produced which was 
more than existed before, though in ever so different form and quality, 
does this present the absurd idea that it was created from nothing. Now, 
the truer and more rational conception is, that there never was a time 
when matter did not exist in some condition, as the body of God, if you 
please, of which He'is the soul. But still the substance is to be conceived 
of as existing from God, permeated by his life and motion, eternally 
upheld and sustained by Him, so that the discreting process is not to be 
thought of as ever commenced in time, but as an order of existence from 
eternity. Then the creation of matter and of material objects will simply 
be a process of formation. And although spirit and matter are still sa 
unlike, yet they may be thought of as one substance, in discrete separation, 200 
PHILOSOPHY OF 
organic entity, we understand something of how 
good or bad qualities are transmissible, and may 
be inherited from parentage and ancestry. If it 
is not organic, although we may believe, we can 
understand nothing about it. We may inherit a 
peculiar organism of soul as well as of body; and 
we can see how the spiritual qualities can stick 
there: but how an unsubstantial, formless noth- 
ing, or next to nothing, can obtain any permanent 
foothold in a man’s character, we cannot see with 
our most powerful glasses. It is altogether too 
much like the ghost in Hamlet, when he would 
strike at him —“ He is here, he is here, he is 
gone ” 1 
In this fine alchemy, too, between the soul and 
from eternity to eternity. Here we see the truth that there is in Dualism, 
and here we avoid the error also of those philosophers who so exaggerate 
that conception as to speak of a kingdom of life and a kingdom of death 
from all past eternity. It is all one, pervaded with life, as the soul and 
body of Divinity. And we mistake much if the origin of what we call 
evil may not be found in the simple re-action of one of these extreme sub- 
stances against the other, in the necessary divine efforts to refine, beautify, 
and amplify the creation. Of course, when this re-action comes to exist 
in man, it assumes a higher, more complex, and moral form, but it is 
capable of being systematized and harmonized. 
For a much fuller illustration of this subject, but with some imperfec- 
tions here corrected, see the author’s work — ‘“God in his Providence,” 
in the chapter entitled “ The Connection of God with Nature.” MORAL AND SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 
201 
body, to improve the one is evidently to improve 
the other. A pure spirit purifies even the body, by 
dispersing many gross and offensive particles not 
in harmony with it; and a pure and vigorous and 
healthy body certainly gives release and freedom 
to the spirit’s energies, if it does not contribute 
to the purity of the soul itself. But there is so 
much depending upon the original germ, that all 
post-natal influences, whether moral or physical, 
are very much determined by it. Even the air, 
light, electricity, water, food, dress, exercise, act 
differently upon what is first made differently. 
You cannot magnetize an animal as you can a 
man — a gross subject as you can a fine one. 
Preaching and teaching do great good ; but all 
talk and reading only make their comparatively 
slight impressions upon an organism that has gone 
before it. Preaching itself is the expression of 
an organism. And it is high or low, truthful or 
false, successful or unsuccessful, according as the 
preacher has received his organic structure and 
quality from his parentage and ancestry. All spir- 
itual influences are limited and confined within 
this channel and its subsequent improvements. XII. 
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 
I FINALLY, what we want, in this age of the 
world, is a comprehensive combination of 
all truth, so far as it is known, for the elevation 
and salvation of man. We must not look to the 
soul alone without the body, nor to the body alone 
without the soul. We must seek ends from begin- 
nings, and beginnings from ends. Science itself 
must become divine, and the long looked for union 
between theology and philosophy, faith and reason, 
be hastened by every effort of the friends of either 
towards the approaching nuptials of the royal pair. 
The magic circle of all art, science, knowledge, 
virtue, and holy mystery of religion, must be 
recognized as perfect, eternal, ever revolving, con- 
nected and connecting at all its points, and ex- 
panding unbroken forever. We must conceive 
clearly, speak plainly, and carry our efforts for 
human amelioration to the causes, essences, and 
first principles of things. And the most fruitful CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 
of all fields of human improvement, if only some 
self-sacrificing disciples could be found more effect- 
ually to enter it, — the very Holy of holies, where 
God and Nature’s high priest stands in his most 
sacred and effectual office, is Marriage. Here, 
around this holy altar, centre earth, time, eternity. 
There is nothing so radical, either in good or evil, 
as the deeds committed here, and no salvation after 
this, but which is limited and conditioned, some- 
times in a most melancholy manner, by what is 
marred and lost at birth. 
But notice that all this is spoken comparatively. 
Education does wonders, especially if begun early 
with the infant. Regeneration does more. Their 
combined influence may alter, in the most marked 
manner, the form and shape of the brain, improve 
the quality, and increase the volume of it. And 
of course the mind also that is within it. The 
whole soul may grow and improve by it. But 
this, I have said, may be done with the finest and 
best formations as well as the worst: and, all other 
circumstances being equal, all advantages arid op- 
portunities, it would invariably be found that those 
who received the best start at birth would con- 
tinue in advance: and we have reason to believe, 204 
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 
therefore, that in the spiritual spheres, where the 
social and circumstantial inequalities incident to 
the present life exist no longer, the obscure gen- 
iuses and the best intrinsic specimens of human 
nature will break forth and shine by a necessity 
that is in them, — will outreach those who have 
received but ordinar}7 organizations, and who are 
dependent, for their superiority here, mainly on 
education and circumstances ; and it is, therefore, 
pre-eminently practical to observe and enforce 
these fundamental laws and principles of our 
whole being. 
Indeed, while we would not at all disparage the 
old distinction between “ the children of nature 
and the children of grace,” and while we are dis- 
posed to run a very orthodox line between the 
predominantly selfish on the one hand and the pre- 
dominantly unselfish on the other, and thus, among 
infinite grades and degrees of character which 
seem to allow of no such division — which seem to 
embrace all mankind in one promiscuous mass, still 
to recognize the scriptural division into two great 
classes — the sheep and the goats, the righteous 
and the wicked, the good and the bad ; — while, I 
say, we see this in the predominating tendencies CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 
205 
of mankind, though all are in more or less mixed 
states so long as they live in this world; and while 
there may be at least a temporary completing and 
finishing of this characterization in the world to 
come; yet at the same time, taking a surface 
view of humanity, what do we see? We see, 
even allowing much partial work of regeneration, 
that the chief difference among the masses of men 
is not what education and regeneration have made, 
but what natural first birth has made, — qualified 
and modified, I allow, by what the Spirit has trans- 
mitted, through the ages, of the new and second 
birth into the first, so that both are in a measure 
identified as the same. The most cursory view of 
humanity need only to be taken to confirm this. 
If one man or woman is prominent for traits that 
arrest quick attention, and strike every beholder 
— if one, for instance, is pleasant and attractive in 
manners, of open, smiling countenance, and another 
is stern, cold, unsmiling and unsocial; if one is irri- 
table, quick-tempered, fretful and passionate, and 
another quiet, smooth, and generally unruffled ; if 
one is sour and morose, and another sweet and 
amiable; if one is a scold and another a peace- 
maker ; one sharp, and shy, and deceitful, and 206 
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 
another round, candid, and honest; if one is a gen- 
tleman, and another a clown; one good-natured 
and another ill-natured ; it is chiefly the difference 
of first birth. It is because they were born with 
these natural graces and virtues, or faults and 
vices. To be sure, the deeper and more vital dis- 
tinctions of character, such as run into the very 
life of man, and present us with those specimens 
of unselfishness and philanthropy which are the 
praise and glory of the world, are generally con- 
fined to Christian people. (Speaking now within 
the limits of Christendom.) And they may be 
said to be, in a vast, preponderating measure, ac- 
companied and stimulated by the influences of 
Christianity. But still the truth applies, that 
Christianity seeks out its nobler stock on which 
to graft these excellences. They do not come so 
to the lowest and vilest of humanity. Allowing 
for this distinction, and the truth is conspicuous 
that goodness as well as intelligence favors the 
noblest born. There are born philanthropists as 
well as born poets and mathematicians. There is 
native moral genius as well as intellectual. But 
in this use of the term native, I include, as I have 
said, all that good which has been transmitted from CONCLUDING DEFLECTIONS. 
207 
a more or less regenerate parentage. And speak- 
ing generally, in this sense, the virtue of the 
world, in any one generation, is as little depen- 
dent, it seems, upon education, or any extraneous 
spiritual influences, as its intelligence : and both 
are quite as much indebted to native qualities 
which have stimulated and secured them. In fact, 
if we see them running so much into each other, 
that is, the native and the acquired, as, in a long 
view, to quite confound frequently all analyzation 
of comparative forces, this abates not from the 
conspicuity of our main subject, but establishes 
the vital and everlasting importance of character 
secured in the native organism, by a sound, healthy, 
and original manhood. 
After all that has been said, no one will certainly 
accuse me of disparaging education at all; and I 
am free to acknowledge what triumphs of Chris- 
tianity— what conquests of God’s grace there are, 
over many an inveterate sinner, and many a de- 
praved and vicious habit. Let no one think that I 
am seeking any new importance for our old and 
fallen nature. It is no part of my theology at all. 
And if I overstate in some particulars, it is inad- 
vertently, while I am only aiming at important 208 
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 
truth in general, and in the particulars that have 
been so sadly and sinfully overlooked. 
I see, too, how feeble all this merely natural vir- 
tue may be, till it is adopted by the spirit, and 
carried into life and practice from a religious prin- 
ciple. I see that these good and evil qualities are 
neither virtues nor vices, properly speaking, till 
acted out at an age of accountability. They are 
mere germs of character bid in the organism. It 
was not, with the evil, original sin, but it was 
original organism — tendency, which broke out 
into sin. And with the good, though it was noth- 
ing but natural good, which may not abide the 
spiritual life — may not be chosen and adopted by 
the interior man, and hence may not abide in eter- 
nity, yet it is very prominent and active, very 
characteristic and amiable, and very desirable as 
stock in trade to begin with, for it is the very 
ground of the Spirit’s operation. And thus, I say, 
in this surface humanity — which, after all, is a 
very desirable and admirable surface, and much 
deeper than we may at first imagine, the chief 
difference among men seems to be, at least in any 
one or two generations, not what education and 
regeneration have in this time made, but what has 209 
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 
proceeded in natural course by the impetus of 
character given at birth. This, of course, as mod- 
ified by spiritual influences in very early infancy 
and childhood, as before stated. And when we 
see how this inheritance is the ground and founda- 
tion of all that comes after — the attracting point 
for all the glories and graces of the heavens, 
around which the angels gather in their co-oper- 
ating efforts for our salvation, we may perhaps 
learn to prize it with a new and deeper interest, 
and pray God to sanctify our children even from 
the first act of our most fearful, yet most highly 
privileged, procreative agency. 
And so we come round again to our grand con- 
clusion, forced upon us by every consideration of 
human improvement, by every fact in nature, by 
every Christian experience, by all history, and 
borne down upon us by all the weight and author- 
ity of the mighty laws of hereditary descent, that 
our whole life, being, and welfare, in time and eter- 
nity, is bound up in this wondrous connection of 
the first and second births ; — that the regenera- 
tion of the soul of the Christian is invested with 
its mightiest and most stupendous influence, as it 
bears upon his immediate offspring and upon un- 210 
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 
told generations; — and that there can be no true 
reform, and nothing thoroughly attempted, till at- 
tention is directed here, at the sources of power, 
and till Christ walks the earth again in little chil- 
dren, born of regenerate parents, not of lust but 
of love, and by special consecration for that holy 
work in the homes of a heavenly Marriage.