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236 ESOTERIC ANTHROPOLOGY.
masters' lusts. Look at the slavery of women over the
civilized world, and their submission to the lusts of
their masters. The first case is exceptional and rare—
the last is general and almost universal.
Nature is ever kind, and neglects nothing that can
benefit her creatures. She exerts her power to pre
serve the race, even from these evils. What some
doctors call the vis medicatrix naturce—the healing
power of nature, which tends constantly to growth and
healthy development, which heals our wounds, and
cures our diseases when we give it a chance, and it is
possible to do so ; this ever power operates to purify,
and elevate. It often does much to save
strengthen,
the child from the diseases of the parent, and children
are many times better than we could expect. With all
things in nature working together for good,
culture and educa
we must
not despair, but try to improve by
tion. With good conditions, and surrounded by good
influences, I have seen the faults and diseases of birth
gradually eradicated and cured, until a scarcely sign of
them remained ; and children, born ugly, diseased,
and with unfortunate mental and moral tendencies,
have come to be more beautiful, healthy, and good
than seemed possible in their infancy.
OF GESTATION.
The second condition of health is, that a child should
be well born, or. more properly,
well borne. The
whole state of the mother, during the period of preg
nancy, influences the being of the child. Her blood is
its nutriment, and that blood must be pure. It is from
her nervous system that it derives the elements of its