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So, too, the wife in whom this element is strong, active, and dr rected upon her husband, thinks the world of him, Iris society, advice, services, and caresses; is blind to his faults, but overrates his virtues; is completely devoted to his interests, and esteems it a privilege to promote his happiness, even at the sacrifice of her own; literally living in and for him, and desiring nothing as much as reciprocity of affection; but when feeble, or not exercised towards him, she magnifies his faults, depreciates his virtues, disregards his advice and happiness, is unwilling to be beholden to him, refuses his marks of affection, and literally loathes his embraces. It also renders man fond of woman as a sex, and causes him to appreciate and love the feminine in proportion to the intensity of its normal action, and vice versa of woman as regards man.

Its exercise, therefore, becomes a duty. As no department of our nature was made in vain, so this was not created to slumber, like the foolish virgins, its lamp unfed and gone out. We are under a moral obligation, solemn and imperative, to become parents, and thus fulfil this high function, this exalted destiny of us all; nor can they attain the perfect stature of men and women, who do not.

Taking its dignified rank, then, among the primary elements of the human mind, its proper exercise, like that of every other function of our nature, is promotive of happiness, and in a preeminent degree. As, in the proper exercise of the eye, or in and by the very act of seeing, we naturally experience a great amount of pleasure; and thus of eating, breathing, accumulating, talking, sympathizing, constructing, remembering, reasoning, worshiping, &c., throughout every function of our whole nature so the legitimate exercise of this faculty is designed and calculated, in and of itself, to yield a great amount of pleasure, besides that experienced by its living products. Indeed, happiness, both in its own independent exercise, and in every other department of our nature, is its sole end and aim, its only constitutional product. More. Besides that wide range of pleasure consequent on its own individual action, it furnishes

IT QUICKENS ALL THE OTHER FACULTIES.

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to Parental Love the only objects capable of calling forth its full. toned and pathetic energies; which. thus roused and quickened calls industry into new and more powerful action, in order to provide for their constantly returning wants; adds increased zest to Appetite in feeding and eating with them; pleasurably re-augments Cautiousness to guard, provide, and care for them; fans the ready spark of Approbativeness into a blaze of delightful action in hearing them praised; redoubles the action and consequent pleasure of Language, by furnishing new listeners and talkers, and those most delighting and delighted in the world; provides reason with new listeners to its logic, and new ways and means" for promoting their happiness to be planned and executed, as well as opens up a new and vast field for contemplation; presents Mirthfulness with new and most amusing subjects of merriment, and incentives to laughter; furnishes Benevolence with new objects of sympathy; Devotion with new subjects of prayer, and pupils of religious instruction; Authority with new and obedient vassals; Hope with new and most enchanting buds of promise; and thus of every other faculty of man; thereby redoubling, a thousand times over, their action, and consequent enjoyment. Reader, when you grasp this subject in all its bearings, you will see why Love and its accompaniments, exert so all-powerful an influence over the weal and wo of man; how, when well directed, they swell the placid stream of human happiness from the rivulet to the mighty river; gently irrigating the whole vale of life till its enriched soil bears, in full perfection, every flower, every fruit, every sweet, which the exhaustless capabilities of our nature can experience. Nor, in all probability, has the most happy of mortals in the domestic relations, ever yet experienced a hundredth part of that flowing tide of perpetual pleasure which this element is designed and calculated to pour forth upon every son and daugher of the human family. Behold how inexpressibly happy it renders some who neither understand its laws, nor apply intellect to its guidance, and that with even only moderate physical and mental endowments.

How much more, then, mankind in after ages, who shall both understand and apply its laws, and possess an organization incalculably superior to any now attained!

But, like all the other elements of our nature, it has its laws and they, broken, inflict pain, and pain proportionate to the pleasure consequent on their obedience. Nor could the eloquence of angels portray the agony of body and the torture of mind caused thereby. Families gone into perpetual mourn ing for a dissolute son! Talents, moral worth-all that is noble and God-like-forever blasted-offered up a living sacrifice on the altar of lust! And by the uncounted million! Confiding daughters of virtue defiled, and sent into hopeless bondage, for a short but most miserable existence, in the land of shameless prostitution! All the nectar of female loveliness and bliss turned into the bitterest gall our natures can drink, and in thickening draughts without number! Hus. bands and wives innumerable estranged, and rendered intolerably miserable for life! Our race, even, corrupted, debased, depraved, and tortured, in ways without number, and degrees beyond computation! Oh! if one deep, continuous wail of the wo caused thereby, could break upon the ears of all flesh, ten thousand thunders could not be heard! All would exclaim, "Where is the ark of virtue and safety?" Oh youth! pause and tremble, for you walk upon the very verge of this frightful precipice, ignorant of impending danger! Oh! take this friendly warning. And, ye who have sinned and suffered, sound the alarm. SCATTER LIGHT! IMPART KNOWLEDGE ! We may, perchance, light upon the observance of these laws without understanding them, and should if our natures were unperverted; but infinitely better with. Concerning no other faculty, probably, exists an equal amount of ignorance and perversion-of violated law, and consequent suffering. On no other subject do we equally need that information which it is the one specific object of this work to impart, namely, to show what exercise of this function will secure the highest happiness it is capable of bestowing, and what must necessa

THE PHILOSOPHY OF PARENTAGE.

rily induce suffering; if it shall disclose which, it will become a great public benefaction. Bear in mind that it comes to increase these pleasures, not to abridge them. Let us, then, proceed to investigate this incalculably momentous subject with clean hands and pure souls, and in order to augment our virtue and happiness, and escape all the terrible consequences of its perversion.

SECTION II.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF PARENTAGE, OR MODUS OPERANDI BY WHICH IT STAMPS ITS OWN IMAGE AND LIKENESS" ON PROGENY, IL

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Progeny inherits the constitutional character of parentage. Ditto the particular conditions existing at this period. Magnetism the instrumentality. The origin of all that grows analogous. Its quo modo, that relation existing between all the secretions and the state of body and mind for the time being. This secretion especially. Facilitated by the location of Amativeness. Illustrative supposition. How the parental physiognomy is transmitted. Respective offices of paternity and maternity. Facts. Congenital history of an idiot, as related by George Combe. Daughter of a distinguished judge. Ditto of a maimed whaleman. Consumptive and other diseases at birth. Jacob's peeled rods. Illegitimates. Summary appeal to parents.

THAT progeny, vegetable, animal, and human, both derives its primitive constitution, physical and mental, from its parents, and also resembles its parental nature, is a conclusion established by the universal FACT, that the products of all genera, species, and individual things reproduced throughout the vast range of creation, "take after" their parentage; those of man being human beings; of whales, whales; and of every animal, tree, herb, and thing, being similar to its parent animal, tree, herb, or thing. To perceive that the natures of children are

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