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OF PREGNANCY. 195
years, as with the negroes, the Chinese, the Jews,
etc., but that the qualities and peculiarities of every
individual are in like manner transmissible. It is prov
en also that any faculty exercised during pregnancy by
the mother, is strengthened in the child. Thus any
be made
mental or moral faculty of the mother may
striking and active in the child, by being used during
pregnancy ; and in this way every mother has in her
charge, in a great measure, not only the physical, but
the mental and moral character of her offspring.
And it is for these reasons that every child should be
a child of love, a child of health, and all generous ac
tivities ; a child of competence, and freedom from care
and the miseries of poverty; a child of beauty, be
gotten and developed amid beautiful things
and beauti
ful thoughts ; a child of frank, honest sincerity. If
we would improve our race, we must give to the
mothers of our race all the conditions of improvement
and. happiness. For on my thoughts this subject,
see the last chapter of " Woman in All Ages and Na
tions."
The whole process of gestation, it should be remem
of it should
bered, is a natural process, and every part
be naturally performed,
from the beautiful act of im
pregnation, sanctified by the holy passion of love, and
accompanied with the most exquisite of all sensual de
lights, to the grand act of the expulsion of the foetus,
and its entrance upon independent life. And this whole
process, when accomplished naturally, is one of delight,
and not means one by any
of disease and pain. Even
the process of childbirth, with such a degree of health
and strength as may be gained by the water-cure, and