Part 2 (1/2)
The influence exerted by Jacob's rods was of a different character from that which is supposed to give rise to the marking of offspring before birth, which is not uncommon if we are to accept as true all the cases mentioned in books referring to the subject. What occurred took place _before_ conception, and not subsequent to it, as in these cases.
Nevertheless, both cla.s.ses of phenomena are recognized by so competent an authority as M. Th. Ribot, who, in his ”Heredity,”[57:A] when criticising Dr. Lucas' explanation of the origin of the numerous exceptions to the law of heredity, as being due to the operation of the law of spontaneity, affirms that there is no law of spontaneity, but that all such exceptions may be explained by reference to certain causes of diversity. M. Ribot gives three causes of diversity, which are: 1--Antagonistic heredities of two parents; 2--Accidental causes in action at the moment of generation; 3--External and internal influences subsequent to conception. He a.s.signs but little importance to causes acting after birth, such as diet, climate, circ.u.mstances, education, physical and moral influences, because, though they may produce serious effects, these are not radical. Possibly, however, since the advance made in the education of those who are born with defects of the sensory apparatus, M. Ribot would somewhat modify his opinion on that point. As to the causes which operate at the period of conception, or subsequent thereto and before birth, he says, in relation to the latter cla.s.s, they ”are all the physical and moral disturbances of uterine existence--all those influences which can act through the mother upon the fetus during the period of gestation; impressions, emotions, defective nutrition, effects of imagination.” He adds: ”These causes are very real, despite the objections of Lucas, who attacks them in order to establish his law of spontaneity. We see from examples that between considerable causes and their effects there exists an amazing disproportion.”
The causes of diversity which operate at the instant of conception depend, says Ribot, ”less upon the physical and moral natures of the parents than on the particular state in which they are at the moment of procreation.” This fact is referred to by M. de Quatref.a.ges as fully proving the universality of the law of heredity, and M. Ribot adds, ”It enables us to understand that those transitory states which exist at the moment of conception may exert a decisive influence on the nature of the being procreated, so that often, where now we see only spontaneity, a more perfect knowledge of the causes at work would show us heredity.”
Professor E. D. Cope, the well-known author of ”The Origin of the Fittest,” would seem to doubt the truth of the stories of birthmarks on the ground that ”the effect of temporary impressions on the mother is not strong enough to counterbalance the molecular structure established by impressions oftener repeated throughout much longer periods of time.”[59:A] And yet there is no doubt that birthmarks do occasionally occur, although it is very difficult to obtain properly authenticated cases of them.
AN ILl.u.s.tRATIVE CASE.--How great is the influence on unborn offspring of the mother's mental condition, as well as the effect over them of pleasant surroundings, is shown by the following case. A young girl attracted attention by her beauty and by the superiority of the type she exhibited over that of either of her parents, and on her mother being spoken to on the subject she remarked:
”In my early married life my husband and I learned how to live in holy relations, after G.o.d's ordinance. My husband lovingly consented to let me live apart from him during the time I carried this little daughter under my heart, and also while I was nursing her. Those were the happiest days of my life. Every day before my child was born, I could have hugged myself with delight at the prospect of becoming a mother. My husband and I were never so tenderly, so harmoniously, or so happily related to each other, and I never loved him more deeply than during those blessed months. I was surrounded by all beautiful things, and one picture of a lovely face was especially in my thought. My daughter looks more like that picture than she does like either of us. From the time she was born she was like an exquisite rosebud--the flower of pure, sanctified, happy love. She never cried at night, was never fretful or nervous, but was all smiles and winning baby ways, filling our hearts and home with perpetual gladness. To this day, and she is now fourteen years old, I have never had the slightest difficulty in bringing her up.
She turns naturally to the right, and I never knew her to be cross or impatient or hard to manage. She has given me only comfort; and I realize from an experience of just the opposite nature that the reason of all this is because my little girl had her birthright.”
The future experience of this lady was, however, of a very different nature. She added:
”A few years later I was again about to become a mother, but with what different feelings! My husband had become contaminated with the popular idea that even more and frequent relations were permissible during pregnancy. I was powerless against this wicked sophistry, and was obliged to yield to his constant desires. But how I suffered and cried; how wretched I was; how nervous and almost despairing! Worst of all, I felt my love and trusting faith turning to dread and repulsion.
”My little boy, on whom my husband set high hopes, was born after nine of the most unhappy, distressing months of my life, a sickly, nervous, fretting child--myself in miniature, and after five years of life that was predestined by all the circ.u.mstances to be just what it was, after giving us only anxiety and care, he died, leaving us sadder and wiser.
”I have demonstrated to my own abundant satisfaction that there is but one right, G.o.d-given way to beget and rear children, and I know that I am only one of many who can corroborate this testimony.”
The following case of prenatal culture appeared in _The Philosophical_ for October 5, 1895, above the signature of ”John Allyn,” who says:
”About forty years ago I was a neighbor of a young couple who had been recently married. They were of fair natural abilities, but not highly educated. The wife could play on the piano well and accompany it with her voice. The husband was a house-building contractor. Before their first child was born the wife was provided with instruments for drawing, and interested herself in their use and mathematical calculations connected with them. The child proved to be a boy, who took to architectural drawing as by instinct. With very little effort he became proficient, and is now employed at a high salary by the Southern Pacific Railroad as their architect.
”Some years later, before the second child was born, the mother interested herself with music with reference to the effect it would have on the unborn child. This child proved to be a girl, who is now an expert singer, finding ready employment in opera companies. Though not a star, she has a superior talent for music which enabled her to take advantages of musical training easily.”
BELIEFS OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLES.--Whenever such cases happen, it is under the influence of some very strong emotion, during the period of gestation, arising from the action on the nervous system of the mother by an external object presented to the sight, the organ of which would seem to have an intimate a.s.sociation with the general muscular system.
There is nothing to show that primitive peoples recognized the action of prenatal influence through the senses; but there is a very curious custom, which is so widespread at the present time that we may well suppose it to have been formerly almost universal, dependent upon the imagined effect of the eating of animal flesh. All primitive peoples believe that a man acquires physical or mental characteristics from animals of whose flesh he partakes. Cannibalism is closely connected with this notion, as the man who eats part of the body of a foe is thought to become endowed with the victim's courage, strength or other special quality. Probably the Mosaic regulations as to unclean animals, that is, animals unfit for food, was based on such an idea; and certainly the command to abstain from eating blood was thus connected; as we are told the blood is the life, and if so, then it must be the carrier of vital influences.
The custom above referred to, which is known to ethnologists as _la couvade_, or ”hatching,” supposes injurious action on the organism of the child of food eaten by its parents, as appears from the facts brought together by Dr. E. B. Tylor in his ”Researches into the Early History of Mankind.” The couvade usually has reference to the period immediately following the birth of a child; but among the native tribes of South America, where it is more extensively prevalent than elsewhere, it is observed while the child is still unborn. Thus, in Brazil, according to Von Martius, ”A strict regimen is preserved before the birth; the man and the woman refrain for a time from the flesh of certain animals, and live chiefly on fish and fruits.” The peculiarity of the couvade custom, and that which gives it its special interest, is the fact that it usually concerns the father and not the mother, as injury to the child is supposed to be due to the conduct of the former rather than of the latter. Thus, among the Land Dyaks of Borneo, ”The husband, before the birth of his child, may do no work with a sharp instrument, except what is necessary for the farm; nor may he fire guns, nor strike animals, nor do any violent work, lest bad influences should affect the child; and after it is born the father is kept in seclusion indoors for several days, and dieted on rice and salt, to prevent not his own but his child's stomach from swelling.”
Here food abstinence takes place after the birth of the child, but, according to Brett, in Guinea ”Some of the Acawois and Caribi nations, when they have reason to expect an increase of their families consider themselves bound to abstain from certain kinds of meat, lest the expected child should, in some mysterious way, be injured by the partaking of it. The acouri (or agouti) is thus tabooed, lest, like that little animal, the child should be meager; the haimara, also, lest it should be blind--the outer coating of the eye of the fish suggesting film or cataract; the labba, lest the infant's mouth should protrude like the labba's, or lest it be spotted like the labba, which spots would ultimately become sores.”
Another related case, of more recent observation, is that of the Motumotu of New Guinea, who say that after conception the _mother_ must not eat sweet potato or taro, lest the head of the child grow out of proportion, and the _father_ must not eat crocodile or several kinds of fish, lest the child's legs grow out of proportion. At Suan, a husband shuts himself up for some days after the birth of his first child, and will eat nothing.[65:A]
Various explanations of the custom of couvade have been offered, and probably C. Staniland Wake is right when he states that it is connected with the idea that the father is the real source of the child's life.[66:A] As he points out, on the authority of M. Girard-Teulon, among the European Basques, even at the present day, a husband enters his wife's abode only ”for the purpose of reproduction, and to work for the benefit of his wife.” Mr. Wake remarks that, ”With some of the Brazilian tribes, when a man becomes a father he goes to bed instead of his wife, and all the women of the village come to console him for the pain and suffering he has had in making this child.” This agrees with the idea entertained by so many peoples that the child is derived from the father only, the mother being merely its nourisher. When such an idea is held, it is not surprising if, as among the Abipones, the belief is formed that ”the father's carelessness influences the new-born offspring, from a natural bond and sympathy of both,” or if the father abstains, either before or after the child's birth, from eating any food, or performing any actions which are thought capable of doing it harm. Still more so, if the child is regarded, as is sometimes the case, as the reincarnation of the father, a notion which is supported by the fact, pointed out by Mr. Gerald Ma.s.sey, that in the couvade the parent identifies himself with the infant child, into which he has been typically transformed.
That conclusion agrees with the opinion expressed by Mr. Tylor, that the couvade ”implicitly denies that physical separation of 'individuals'
which a civilized man would probably set down as a first principle common by nature to all mankind... . It shows us a number of distinct and distant tribes deliberately holding the opinion that the connection between father and child is not only, as we think, a mere relation of parentage, affection, duty, but that their very bodies are joined by a physical bond, so that what is done to the one acts directly upon the other.”[67:A] The couvade custom is thus closely connected with the question of the special relations.h.i.+p of a child to one or other of its parents. Curious notions on this subject have been formed from time to time; but the ancients almost universally entertained the idea held by the Greeks that ”the father, as endowed with creative power, was clothed with the divine character, but not the mother, who was only the bearer and nourisher of the child.” Professor Hearn accepts this view in his work, ”The Aryan Household,” and suggests as the Aryan thought on the subject: ”A male was the first founder of the house. His descendants have 'the nature of the same blood' as he. They, in common, possess the same mysterious principle of life. The life spark, so to speak, has been once kindled, and its ident.i.ty, in all its transmissions, must be preserved. But the father is the life-giver. He alone transmits the life spark, which from his father he received. The daughter receives, indeed, the principle of life, but she cannot transmit it.”
M. Ribot, who, as we have seen, endorses the popular belief as to the possibility of the fetus being affected, during uterine existence, through the organism of the mother, reduces all the obscure causes of deviation from heredity to two cla.s.ses. Of these, the first is the disproportion of effects to causes, already mentioned; and the second is the transformation of heredity. As to the first of these causes, he lays it down as a general truth that ”the more complicated the mechanism, the greater the disproportion between accidental causes and their effects.”
He supports this conclusion by reference to Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's researches on the production of monsters, and he affirms that the disproportion between cause and effect cannot be foreseen by measuring, but is known only by experience, as ”psychological laws are a.n.a.logous now to mechanical and now to chemical laws,” so that it is impossible to proceed by deduction from causes to effects. (Page 207.)
BIRTHMARKS RARE.--And yet the very fact that cases of birthmarks are comparatively rare, proves the greatly preponderating influence of heredity over the const.i.tution of the offspring, modified by the disposition of the parents at the time of procreation. Professor Cope has some explanatory remarks on that subject which deserve quotation. He says--after referring to the hypothesis that growth-force may be, through the motive force of the animal, directed to any locality, whether the commencement of an executive organ has begun or not--that ”A difficulty in the way of this hypothesis is the frequently unyielding character of the structure of adult animals, and the difficulty of bringing sufficient pressure to bear on them without destroying life.
But, in fact, the modifications must, in most instances, take place during the period of growth. It is well known that the mental characteristics of the father are transmitted through the spermatozoid, and that, therefore, the molecular movements which produce the mechanism of such mental characters must exist in the spermatozoid. But the material of the spermatozoid is combined with that of the ovum, and the embryo is compounded of the animal contents of both bodies. In a wonderful way the embryo develops into a being which resembles one or both parents in minute details. This result is evidently determined by the molecular and dynamic character of the original reproductive cells which necessarily communicate their properties to the embryo which is produced by their subdivisions.” Professor Cope goes on to say, ”Richard Hering has identified this property of the original cells with the faculty of memory. This is a brilliant thought, and, under restriction, probably correct. The sensations of persons who have suffered amputation show that their sensorium maintained a picture or map of the body so far as regards the location of all its sensitive regions. This simulcrum is invested with consciousness whenever the proper stimulus is applied, and the character of the stimulus is fixed by it. This picture probably resides in many of the cells, both sensory and motor, and it probably does so in the few cells of simple and low forms of life. The spermatozoid is such a cell, and, how or why we know not, also contains such an arrangement of its contents, and contains and communicates such a type of force. It is probable that in the brain-cell this is the condition of memory of locality. If, now, an intense and long-continued pressure of stimulus produces an unconscious picture of some organ of the body in the mind, there is reason to suppose that the energies communicated to the embryo by the spermatozoid and ovum will partake of the memory thus created. The only reason why the oft-repeated stories of birthmarks are so often untrue, is because the effect of temporary impressions on the mother is not strong enough to counterbalance the molecular structure established by impressions often repeated throughout much larger periods of time.”[71:A]
WHY CHILDREN RESEMBLE PARENTS.--That children reproduce the general and physical and mental characteristics of their parents in combination is unquestionable truth, although the particular mode in which they are communicated is yet undetermined, notwithstanding the fact mentioned by Professor Cope that they are somehow conveyed by the microscopic sperm and germ in the union of which the new being has its beginning. Thus every individual must possess the general characteristics of the primitive human family from which through a vast number of ancestors he has descended. And yet at every stage of descent the organism may have obtained fresh characters, or at least have undergone some modification.