THE HOME.

White Ribbon, Volume 9, Issue 98, 1 July 1903, Page 10

THE HOME.

The Creative Power of Parents.

It is on this important subject of preserving and transmitting untainted the purity and nobility of racial characteristics that woman, as mother, must bring her newly acquired and increasing scientific knowledge to bear. There are subtle and at present little understood evolutionary laws that most certainly govern and influence the transmission of hereditary traits of character, and much of their tendency has yet to be particularised ; but even with the limited knowledge at our disposal, it cannot be too earnestly impressed upon a mother that when her new-born child is placed in her arms she beholds her jinnaed work. Her creative power is exhausted. She can do no more, give no more, form no more. In future she has to guide, control, improve and educate a being that is made.

Woman’s greatest and most fatal error, as regards the ethical development of the race, has hitherto l>een her elementary and superficial conception of her primary duty to her offspring, viz.:—that her obligations towards it begin with its birth ; when, in reality, the most crucial and vital tests of maternity commence with the unseen life Within the mother’s own organism. It is there are formed the future heroes, poets, law-givers, teachers, and leaders of men ; it is from there issue forth the

drones, the sensualists, the drunkards, and the cowards. As the tree is so will the fruit be ; as the fountain is pure or foul, so •’•'ill the stream issuing forth be sweet or bitter. Moral, noble and elevated traits of character are the outcome of pronounced morality on the part of the parents; and if a higher ethical standard is to be reached by struggling humanity, maternity will have to bear most of the labour in raising it. As Bellamy remarks in “ Looking Backward,” “Over the unborn our power is that of God, and our responsibility like His towards us. As we acquit ourselves towards them, so let Him deal with us.’ —Frances Swiney, in “ The Awakening of Women.”