THE 
 
 ' EMPIRE 
 
 OF THE MOTIIERj 
 
 1 ' 
 
 OVER 
 
 1 • 
 
 THE CHARACTER AND DESTINY 
 
 i 
 
 OK TIIK RACE. 
 
 1 
 
 By H 
 
 
 .Vuthi.rof • Marriogt and PareiiMgp," "tVp Unwelcome Child. -A Kin* for a HI..*,- 
 1 "The Sclf-Abiie^..rionist. or Enrtli's True King and Quee»." 
 
 1 
 
 ! The Health of Woman — the Hope of the World. 
 
 1 
 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 1 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 ! PUBLISHED BY 
 
 BELA MARSH, 14 BROMFIEI.D STREET. i 
 
 
 1866. j 
 
 . 1 
 
 ^ 
 
3 Tli53 DD273MSD 
 
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 s6 
 
THE 
 
 EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER 
 
 THE CHARACTER AND DESTINY 
 OF THE RACE. 
 
 By henry C. WRIGHT, 
 
 Author of " Marriage and Parentage," "The rnwolcoino Child," "A Kiss for a Blow," 
 "Tlic Self- Abnegation ist, or Earth's True King aud Queen." 
 
 The TIcaUh of Woman — the Hope of the Worhl, 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 BOSTON:. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY BELA MARSH, U BROMFIELD STREET. 
 1866. 
 

 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1803, by 
 
 IlENRV C. Wright, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of tlie District of Massachusetts. 
 
 Stereotj'pcd at tlie Boston Stereotype Foundry, 
 No. 4 Spring Lane. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 In considering Man and his Destiny, I viewhim in three -states ; 
 (1) in that which intervenes between conception and birth, Avhich I 
 call his pre-natal state ; (2) in that which intervenes between his 
 birth and the death of his body, which I call his post-natal state ; 
 (3) and in that which begins at the death of the body, and never 
 ends, which I call his disembodied state ; or, his life 2cifhin the veil. 
 
 The following pages relate to the first, or pre-natal state. Efforts, 
 whose object is to secure to man a healthy and vigorous body, and 
 a pure and noble soul, generally refer to man in his second or post- 
 natal state. Religions generally look at man with reference to his 
 third or disembodied state. Systems of Education, of Government, 
 and EeHgion, have assumed that nothing can be done for human 
 beings, to save them from physical disease and suffering, from vice 
 and crime, and from tendencies to evil, previous to birth. Among 
 Ministers of Religion, Legislators, and Rulers ; among Poets and 
 Orators, and those who, in all ages and nations, have been received 
 as divinely commissioned, and sent to secure to man a healthy body, 
 a strong and comprehensive intellect, a pure and loving heart, a just 
 and noble character, and a happy destiny, and to save the world, no 
 regard has been paid to what is done, or might and must be done 
 for man, for good or evil, before he is born. • 
 
 But as soon as he is born, then man becomes an object of inter- 
 est to parents, teachers, and reformers, and to social, commercial. 
 
4- PREFACE. 
 
 literary, ecclesiastical, and governmental institutions. The pre-natal 
 state has been ignored, generally, by the family, the school, the col- 
 lege, the pulijit, and the press, and by the Church and State, and 
 regarded as of no account in its bearing on human character and 
 destiny in the post-natal and disembodied states. 
 
 In this work I have aimed to show that the period between the 
 conception and birth of human beings, as to the formation of their 
 character and the control of their destiny, after they are born, is 
 the most important period of their existence ; that what is done for 
 them in the pre-natal state, while theii- organic conditions and ten- 
 dencies are being formed and fixed, bears more directly and power- 
 fully on their health and happiness of body and soul, than what is 
 done for them after they are born. 
 
 The life and happiness of individuals, the love and harmony of 
 families, the prosperity and stability of states and kingdoms, and 
 the protection of life, liberty, and person, are more dependent on 
 influences that bear upon human beings before birth, than on any 
 influence that can be brought to bear on them afterwards. What is 
 organized into us in oiu* pre-natal state, is of more consequence to 
 us, and more vital to our triumph over the temptations and obsta^ 
 cles that impede our progress towards perfection and happiness, 
 than what is educated into us, after we are born. 
 
 The Pre-natal Education of Man ! The Mother, the God- 
 appointed Educator ! The one great object of this book is to 
 call attention to these subjects. I do not forget the power of the 
 father in the work of pre-natal education. It cannot be otherwise 
 than great. The impressions made upon the body and soul of the 
 child, through his agency brought to bear on the feelings and sym- 
 pathies of the mother, must be deep and abiding. But my object 
 is to call attention to the Empire of the Mother, to show the extent 
 of her power, and how it is exerted. 
 
 If the ideas put forth in this work be true, they will, in the 
 future, greatly modify the penal codes and establishments and civil 
 
PREFACE. 5 
 
 governments of the world, and will deeply affect the discipline of 
 children, in families and schools. Humanity will revolt against 
 punishing children for being like their parents, and for being and 
 doing what their parents made them to be and to do. It will be 
 regarded as a wrong and an outrage for parents to organize lying, 
 revenge, cruelty, and every crime into children, and then punish 
 them for acting them out. It will be found to surpass the inge- 
 nuity and power of man, to reconcile with love and sympathy for 
 the true and right, the idea of conceiving human beings in sin, and 
 shaping them in iniquity, and predisposing them to evil in their 
 pre-natal state, and then punishing them for being sinners and evil- 
 doers in their post-natal state. An innate sense of justice, and an 
 instinctive reverence for fair deahng, — all that is Divine in Humaa 
 Nature, will cry out against the practice of organizing theft, rob- 
 bery, and murder into men before they are born, and then im- 
 prisoning or hanging them for becoming thieves, robbers, and 
 murderers after^ they are born. Loving discipline, not vindictive 
 punishment, will be the spirit and practice of governments in their 
 dealings with the victims of parental ignorance and outrage. 
 
 They, whose organic tendencies are to bodily health and vigor, 
 are not apt to estimate truly the conduct of those whose tendencies 
 are to bodily disease and suffering. They, who are blest with an 
 innate tendency to truth, to honesty, love, forgiveness, and to all 
 purity and nobleness of heart and life, are but ill-qualified to sit in 
 judgment on those who have an inherited tendency to falsehood, 
 dishonesty, wrath, revenge, and to all impurity and viciousness* of 
 heart and life. He, in whose soul upicard tendencies are strong 
 and active, and ever triumphant, can hardly appreciate the strug- 
 gles of him whose birthright tendencies to drunkenness, to profli- 
 gacy, and to every degrading and brutahzing passion and habit, 
 predominate over all that is true and noble within him. Pity for 
 the unfortunate will oft touch the heart now filled with indignation 
 for the designedly guilty. The prayer, " Father, forgive them ; they 
 
6 PREFACE. 
 
 know not what they do," will no longer be merely the prayer of the 
 lips, but the abiding spirit of the heart and life. 
 
 If the positions taken in the following pages be true, the Health 
 of Woman, in its bearing on the destiny of the race, will, in the 
 world's future, be regarded as of transcendent importance, and as 
 deserving the special attention of all who seek the elevation and 
 happiness of man, and his progress in all goodness. 
 
 But, leaving these subjects to those who are to come after, and 
 who shall earnestly labor, by a war of ideas, rather than by a war 
 of bullets, to purify and ennoble man, I ask that the positions I 
 have taken be carefully and candidly considered before they are con- 
 demned. If they are erroneous, they cannot stand ; if true, they 
 cannot be safely neglected. " Prove all things, and hold fast 
 THAT WHICH " (in your view) " IS good." 
 
 HENRY C. WRIGHT. 
 
 Boston, August 3, 1863. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER I. — A Man of One Idea. The Elevation and 
 Happiness of Man. — God seen and worshipped in Man, his 
 most perfect Manifestation 9-17 
 
 CHAPTER H. — Man as the Result of Human Agency. 
 As to Existence, Organization, Character, and Destiny. — 
 Forest Scene. — AVho is responsible for the Existence, Or- 
 ganization, and Destiny of Children ? 18-28 
 
 CHAPTER HI. — Our Saviour is Born with us. An 
 Inborn Saviour. — Self-Redemption. — Definition of the 
 Healing Art 29-37 
 
 CHAPTER IV. — Destiny determined by Organization. 
 
 Physical Destiny determined by Physical Organization. . 38-47 
 
 CHAPTER V. — Destiny determined by Organization. 
 Psychical Destiny determined by Psychical Conditions. — 
 Intellectual Powers. — AfFectional and Sympathetic Pow- 
 ers. — Passions and Appetites. — The Destiny of the Soul 
 determined by its Organic Conditions and Innate Tenden- 
 cies 48-61 
 
 CHAPTER VI. — Organization determined by Mater- 
 nal Conditions. Influences of Home. — Of Social Re- 
 lations. — Of Occupations, Amusements, and Political 
 Relations. — Of Climate, Soil, and Material Surroundings. 
 
 — Organic Tendency to Useful Labor. — The Child Visitor. 
 
 — Maternal Associations 62-71 
 
 CHAPTER VII. —Organic Existence —Where formed ? 
 Begun and completed in the Organism of the Mother. — 
 The Organism of AVoman to be tenderly cherished and 
 reverenced by the Husband, the Father, the Brother. — 
 Materials to form the Human Organism, Body and Soul, 
 derived from this Planet. — Woman is commissioned of 
 God to gather them up and put them together 72-81 
 
8 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. — The Human Organism — Whence 
 ITS Materials ? From the Mother's Blood. — Body 
 and Soul derived from the same Source. — The Mother's 
 Power to say of Avhat Materials the Body and Soul shall 
 be fornjed, the same as she has to say of what Materials 
 her own Blood shall be formed. — The Health of Woman. 
 — Its bearing on the Character and Destiny of Individ- 
 uals, States, and Kingdoms 82-91 
 
 CHAPTER IX. — Inhemted Maternal Conditions. 
 Whatever Diseases are in the Mother's Blood must be 
 organized into her Child. — Physical Conditions of the 
 Mother, the Psychical Conditions of the Child. — So of 
 Psychical Conditions of the Mother. — An Authenticated 
 Fact. — Another Fact 92-98 
 
 CHAPTER X. — The Mother as a Lawgiver. Man 
 under Fixed Laws. — The Mother, under God, enacts 
 those Laws. — Her Laws are not arbitrary and capricious, 
 but ever fixed, and ever the same. — Her Laws are Im- 
 partial, bearing on all ahke. — Her Kmpire is Internal. — 
 Sovereignty of the Race invested in the Mother. . . . 99-106 
 
 CHAPTER XL — The Mother as a Teacher and a 
 Priest. The College at which I graduated. — My Alma 
 Mater. — The College of the Race. — Pre-Natal Educa- 
 tion of Man. — The Science of Maternity. — The High 
 Priest of the Race 107-111 
 
 CHAPTER XIL — The Mother as a Prophet. Ex- 
 periences of the Mother during Pre-Xatal Life of Child, 
 a Prophecy of its Post-X^atal Character and Destiny. — 
 Pre-X"atarLife of X^apoleon. — Murder, and other Crimes, 
 Organized into Children. — The Character and Destiny 
 of Jesus foretold by his Mother 112-117 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. — The Mother as a Messiah. Health 
 is Heaven ; Disease is Hell. — AVe find what we carry. — 
 Three facts touching the Human Organism — A Natural 
 Saviour. — The Gospel of Generation. — The Gospel of 
 Regeneration. — God and Heaven Organized into Chil- 
 dren 118-125 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. — The Triumph of Reason and Con- 
 science. Parental Instinct held in Abeyance to Justice 
 and Right. — Parents cursing Children with their Phys- 
 ical Diseases and their Tendencies to Evil. — A Just and 
 Noble Woman refusing to become a Mother, lest she 
 should curse her Child with Scrofula 126-132 
 
THE EMPIRE OE THE MOTHER. 
 
 CHAPTER I, 
 
 A MAN OF ONE IDEA. 
 
 I am a man of one idea. I liave lived for one object, and 
 only for one. What is that one idea so long and so rever- 
 ently cherished ? What that one object so long and earnestly 
 pursued? 
 
 THE ELEVATION AND HAPriNESS OF MAN. 
 
 This has been my life-long object of pursuit ; this, the 
 one controlling idea of my life. In arraying myself against 
 opinions and practices that are consecrated and made vener- 
 able by age, and by the character and standing of those who 
 liave embraced and pursued them, I have acted with a single 
 eye to this great end ; rejecting all opinions and opposing all 
 usages which, in my view, tend to degrade man. Truth 
 can degrade no man. Right can dishonor no man. What- 
 ever is true in principle and right in practice must, of 
 necessity, tend to elevate and ennoble all who adopt and 
 live it. In adopting any^uew idea or practice, one single 
 thought has controlled me, i. e.. Will it tend to purify and 
 ennoble, in myself and others, the nature I bear? Truth 
 1 
 
10 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 and Right must ever produce this result ; Error and Wrong 
 cannot. 
 
 When it is asked, "What is the chief end of man?" my 
 answer is, and ever has been — to perfect the nature he bears, 
 and to enjoy that perfected nature forever. All my thoughts 
 and feelings, all my plans and purposes, all my interior and 
 exterior life centre in this one idea — the perfection and 
 HAPPINESS OF HUMAN NATURE. To eunoble the human 
 type ; to develop perfectly all the capabilities of Human 
 Nature ; to make man all he is designed to be ; and, in this 
 state, to present to the world a more perfect type of man- 
 hood and womanhood ; to this end it is glorious to live, and 
 gain to die. 
 
 It is said — " The chief end of man is to glorify God, and 
 enjoy him forever." My answer is-'— the only way in which 
 we can glorify God and enjoy him is, to glorify the nature 
 given us, and to be happy in the possession of that glorified 
 nature. To look after the nature we possess, body and soul ; 
 to purify and perfect it, and enlarge its capabilities for hap- 
 piness, and to enjoy that perfected nature ; this is the one 
 sole end of our existence, as men and women. I speak to 
 all of human kind ; my message is to the race ; our sole 
 end of existence is to develop the nature we bear, to its 
 highest possible extent, and make it as beautiful and grand 
 as it is capable of being. In a word, we live but to perfect 
 ourselves, and make ourselves all we are designed to be. 
 Outside of this we can do nothing to glorify and enjoy God. 
 We can add nothing to, nor take from, the richness and 
 majesty of His nature. To refine, beautify, and enjoy our- 
 selves, is to honor and enjoy God in the only sense in which 
 we can honor and enjoy Him. 
 
 So far as it is possible for man to harm God, he must do 
 it by harming himself or his fellow-beings ; and so far as it 
 
A MAN OF ONE IDEA. 11 
 
 is possible for man to do good to God, he must do it by doing 
 good to himself or his fellow-beings. Men and women dis- 
 grace God only when they disgrace themselves ; they are an 
 honor to God only when they are an honor to themselves. 
 We are true to God's nature only when we are true to our 
 own. We are false to God only when we are false to ourselves. 
 We are infidels to God only when we are infidels to our- 
 selves. In no sense can men and women be a reproach to 
 God, but by being a reproach to themselves. No man can 
 be conscious of God's approval, who is not conscious of his 
 own approval. Man ! do thyself no harm, and thou canst 
 do thy God no harm, nor thy fellow-beings. Man's only sin 
 against his God is the sin against himself. He that never 
 sins against himself, can never sin against God. 
 
 If Ave never violate the laws of life and health under 
 which we exist, Ave can never violate the laws of God. To 
 be obedient to ourselves, is to be obedient to God. Justice 
 and fidelity to man, are justice and fidelity to God. To 
 reverence man, woman and child, is to reverence God. To 
 worship the human is to worship the Divine Nature. Loy- 
 alty to ourselves is loyalty to God. 
 
 Therefore, I place man first as an object of my aims and 
 efforts. Man is visible and tangible, and his happiness can 
 be increased or diminished by my action. I am a man, and, 
 of necessity, man must be the one ever-present object of 
 thought to me ; my affections, aims and actions, inasmuch as 
 they are the affections, aims and actions of a human being, 
 must necessarily centre on human beings, and have reference 
 to their welfare. Man must, of necessity, incarnate God to 
 man as nothing else can. What we do to man we do to God ; 
 to wrong ourselves or others is to wrong God ; to blaspheme 
 against man is to blaspheme against God ; to enslave and 
 
12 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 sell man is to enslave and sell God. The true man-wor- 
 shipper is the true God worshipper. 
 
 There are those who devote their powers to perfect the 
 nature of flowers, fruits and grains, and who feel richly 
 rewarded by being able to present the most peffect type of 
 the rose, the apple, or wheat. Others devote themselves to 
 the work of perfecting the iorse, and of other domestic ani- 
 mals. This use of human talent is praiseworthy. It is 
 laudable to seek to improve and render beautiful and perfect 
 as possible the surface of the earth, and all the flowers, fruits, 
 grains, vegetables and animals that are associated with the 
 existence and happiness of man. But these are but mere 
 incidents to human beings. In themselves they have no sig- 
 nificance to us. They are of value, and it is important and 
 justifiable to seek to beautify and perfect them, only as they 
 are thereby made more serviceable to man. Just so far as 
 the vegetable and animal kingdoms beneath man, can be 
 made subservient to his true development and happiness, it is 
 wise to expend our energies in efibrts to improve them. 
 Minerals, vegetables and animals are of value and deserving 
 our attention in proportion as they can be made to administer 
 to the demands of our nature. 
 
 So in regard to all efforts made to improve the implements 
 of agriculture, the means of transporting our persons and 
 goods, and of conveying our thoughts, affections, and sympa- 
 thies, around the world ; in regard to efforts designed to make 
 water, air and electricity work for man to produce and pre- 
 pare the means to feed and clothe his body, to enlarge and 
 ennoble his soul, and to supply the demands of his nature 
 generally, the energies directed to perfect these instrumental- 
 ities of human welfare are wisely expended. But, in them- 
 selves, and aside from their relations to human welfare, what 
 are steam-engines, locomotives, railroads, telegraphs, the 
 
A MAN OF ONE IDEA. 13 
 
 compass, the barometer, the thermometer, chemical apparatus, 
 telescopes, microscopes, books, types, and all other inventions? 
 Nothing ; and the efforts expended on them are wasted. 
 Their only value is, in their adaptability to secure to man a 
 nobler and a happier nature and destiny. 
 
 There are those, whose energies are devoted to establish, 
 perfect, and administer commercial, literary, social, political, 
 and religious institutions. But what are institutions aside 
 from their relations to man? What are churches, priest- 
 hoods, rites and ceremonies ; what are schools, colleges and 
 universities ; what are governments, constitutions and codes ; 
 what are titles, stations and wealth, except as they contribute 
 to the elevation and happiness of human nature ? Aside from 
 this, they have no more value than hats and bonnets aside 
 from the heads, shoes aside from the feet, and coats and gowns 
 aside from the bodies which they are designed to benefit ; or 
 houses, aside from the human beings for whose comfort and 
 shelter they are built. Harm not the church, the priesthood, 
 the creed ; harm not the government, the constitution, the 
 state ; harm not the school nor college ; harm not society ; 
 harm not God ; such instructions are urgently and constantly 
 enforced by teachers in church and state. But, " do thyself 
 no harm," and these will take care of themselves. 
 
 Not unfrequently those who are loudest in their professions 
 of love for God and regard for his interests and glory, are the 
 very persons who are most open in their manifestations of 
 hatred to men and of hostility to their interests and welfare. 
 Under pretence of a high and sacred regard for God, they 
 are indifferent to the wrongs and sufferings that are inflicted 
 on human beings. But man cannot wrong God except by 
 wronging himself. ^Ve cannot rob God except by robbing 
 man. Man ! Be careful never to sin nor blaspheme against 
 thyself nor thy fellow-beings, and thou canst not sin nor bias- 
 
14 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 plieme against God. Never hate thy brother and thou canst 
 not hate God. Despise not nor neglect thy poor and suffer- 
 ing brother, and thou canst never despise nor neglect thy God. 
 Be ever anxious and thoughtful about the comfort tlie happi- 
 ness and true glory of the men, women and children that are 
 around thee ; for in this way, alone, canst thou show a true 
 concern for the interests and glory of thy God. " Do I love 
 my neighbor as myself? " Settle this, and thou hast settled 
 the other question, " Do I love God?" For to love man is 
 to love God, in the only practical and profitable way in which 
 W'C can love him. The knowledge and love of man, in the 
 order of time and in practical value, necessarily precede the 
 love of God. Indeed, we can know and love God only in 
 his manifestations. He who says, " I love God, while he 
 hates his brother, is a liar, and the truth is not in him ; for 
 how can he love God, whom he hath not seen, while he hates 
 his brother whom he hath seen ? " Be ever anxious to pos- 
 sess and to show, in all relations, a zeal and readiness to 
 endure scorn, contempt, pain and death, for the good of thy 
 fellow-beings, and in this way alone wilt thou show a benefi- 
 cent zeal and readiness to suffer and die for God. Whoso 
 suffers rather than inflict suffering on others, and dies rather 
 than kill others, suffers and dies for God, as Jesus did. Let 
 thy whole life be but one sublime, heroic act of love and 
 devotion to thy oppressed, down-trodden and suffering fellow- 
 beings, and in this way alone canst thou worship God in 
 spirit and in truth. We can know nothing of God except 
 through his manifestations. 
 
 One of the purest spirits ever embodied in human form 
 earnestly and anxiously asks, " Why is nothing ever said 
 about God as being manifest in living human beings? Why 
 should we be ever aiming to worship God as an abstraction f 
 Why should we not accustom ourselves to see and worship 
 
A MAN OF ONE IDEA. 15 
 
 God in the living men, women and children around us? 
 Especially in the poor, the oppressed and suffering, and in 
 those who seem most lovable to us, who live in most endear- 
 ing and intimate relations with us, and whose interests and 
 happiness would be most essentially promoted by such love 
 and worship of a manifest God?" Indeed, why should we 
 not see and worship God in living men, women and children? 
 Let husbands see and worship God in their wives, and wives 
 in their husbands ; parents in their children, and children in 
 their parents ; brothers in sisters, and sisters in brothers ; and 
 let all see and worship God, as Jesus did, in " publicans and 
 sinners ; " in the oppressed, the despised, the outcast and the 
 suffering. In the language of the person above quoted, " such 
 love is God-given and God-nourished. Such worship is God- 
 apjyroved and God-accepted^ because it identifies the worship 
 of God with justice, love, kindness, forbearance, gentleness, 
 patience and long-suffering towards living human beings." 
 
 Thus let us love and worship God and work and suffer for 
 God, by loving and respecting our fellow-beings, and by 
 laboring and suffering, to elevate and ennoble them, and make 
 them good and happy, and we shall surely hear the welcome 
 — "Come, thou blessed of the Father, enter into the king- 
 dom prepared for thee ; for, inasmuch as thou hast done it 
 unto these my brethren, thou hast done it unto me." Those 
 who think of God and seek to glorify God, aside from man ; 
 who, under pretence of being swallowed up in God, overlook 
 their fellow-beings, and pass by those who have fallen among 
 thieves, may pride themselves on their zeal for God ; but 
 they are strangers to that spirit \vhich leads to doing good, 
 and makes it " more blessed to give than receive ; " which 
 thinketh and doeth no evil, and which is all-hoping, all-trust- 
 ing, all-forgiving, and all-enduring. Having no zeal for 
 man, they can have none for God. 
 
16 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 Man, then, is my one idea ; his perfection and happiness 
 my one object. To beautify and ennoble the nature I bear 
 is Avorthy the entire consecration of all my powers. All other 
 ideas and objects are, in my view, secondary to this. We 
 can never estimate too highly our nature and our destiny. 
 Man is, indeed, clothed with majesty as with a garment ; a 
 crown of glory is on his head ; a diadem of beauty encircles 
 his brow, placed there by the Eternal. All things are placed 
 beneath his feet, and his dominion is over all, secondary and 
 subject only to that great, vitalizing, all-controlling Power in 
 whom we live, move and have our being, and who is made 
 visible and tangible most perfectly in man, and who can be 
 truly and acceptably worshipped by us only in deeds of love 
 and justice to our fellow-beings. Man's whole duty is 
 summed up in one short sentence : Loyalty to his own 
 Nature. Man owes allegiance to nothing in the universe 
 whose existence necessarily conflicts with the perfection and 
 happiness of a single human being. Fear thyself, and fear 
 nothing else. Self-respect is the only basis of respect for 
 others. Keverence thyself, and be not troubled about re- 
 specting any being or power outside of thyself. 
 
 Do thyself no harm. — This comprises the whole of 
 life and duty. He who does himself no harm, can do God no 
 harm. He Who does himself no harm, can do his fellow- 
 beings no harm. Indeed, man can do no harm to God ; he 
 has power only to harm himself and his fellow-beings. As 
 to what is harmful to us, each must judge for himself; but 
 whatever a man judges to be hurtful to himself, he decides 
 to be hurtful to others. He that says another is a villain 
 who attempts to enslave him, decides that he himself is a 
 villain when he enslaves, or apologizes for enslaving, another. 
 He w^ho would shoot another who should attempt to enslave 
 
A MAN OF ONE IDEA. 17 
 
 his "wife and children, decides that he himself ought to be 
 shot when, by his vote or otherwise, he enslaves the wives 
 and children of others. So in all things ; whatever is hurt- 
 ful to us, we being judges, we know is hurtful to others when 
 we do it to them ; and he is " a liar, and the truth is not in 
 him," who pretends to love and worship God, while he does 
 to others that which he is not willing others should do to 
 him ; and who does or apologizes for doing to others what he 
 Avould count an insult, a disgrace, and an outrage when done 
 to him. 
 
 So what a man decides to be wrong or blasphemous when 
 done to God, he decides to be wrong or blasphemous when 
 done to man. Whatever is a sin and a blasphemy against 
 God, is a sin and blasphemy against man. He who has no 
 respect for man, has none for God. No man can worship 
 God, while he scorns the poorest and humblest of his chil- 
 dren — for in every man, woman and child, God " is made 
 flesh, to dwell among us," to be loved and worshipped by us. 
 Thus I associate man, not his incidents and appendages, with 
 what I hold most sacred, and would labor to make him worthy 
 to be thus intimately associated with my highest conception 
 of the true, the just, the loving, and the good. 
 
 1* 
 
18 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHEK. 
 
 CHAPTEE II, 
 
 MAN THE KESULT OF HUMAN AGENCY. 
 
 Human beings may be viewed from two stand-points ; i. e. 
 (1.) Divine Agency. (2.) Hmnan Agency. As seen from 
 the former, man, as to existence, organization, character and 
 destiny, is regarded as the workmanship of God ; as seen 
 from the latter, he is considered the workmanship of man. 
 There are two theories or systems of philosophy and religion ; 
 one regards and deals with man as the result of Divine, the 
 other as the result of Human Agency. 
 
 In all practical efforts to elevate and perfect the nature we 
 bear, success depends essentially on w^hich of these two theo- 
 ries we adopt. Those who consider man as the result of 
 divine agency, will pursue a course very different from the 
 one adopted by those who regard him as the result of human 
 agency. Those who regard slavery as the result of divine 
 agency, will deal with it, and those who practise it, in a man- 
 ner widely different from that which will be adopted by those 
 who regard it as the result of human agency. 
 
 Is man the effect of a cause over w^hich we have any 
 control? If he is not, we can never improve the result by 
 improving the cause — for the cause is above and beyond our 
 reach ; no efforts of ours can change the nature and opera- 
 tions of the antecedent. If the fountain, whence our organic 
 existence, character and destiny are derived, is beyond our 
 
MAN THE RESULT OF HUMAN AGENCY. 19 
 
 reach, and can, in no way, be affected by our efforts, we can 
 exercise no control over the effect by seeking to change 
 the character of the cause. But if we can, to any extent, 
 control the conditions of the fountain, we can, by purifying 
 and improving those conditions, purify the streams that flow 
 from it. 
 
 There is a lake. Many streams flow from it. Can human 
 agency control the conditions of that lake ? Can its waters 
 be made sweeter or more bitter, more clear or more muddy, 
 more wholesome or unwholesome, by our efforts? If so, 
 then can we, by changing the conditions of the lake, change 
 the conditions of the streams flowing from it. Human 
 agency can decide whether those streams shall be sweet or 
 bitter, wholesome or imwholesome. But if we have no con- 
 trol over the conditions of the lake, Ave cannot, through the 
 fountain change the character and direction of the streams. 
 We may work at the streams, and succeed in making them 
 purer for a moment, but the impure waters of the lake are, 
 without ceasing, being poured into these streams, and no 
 progress can be made in permanently improving them while 
 the fountain from which they flow is turbid and poisonous. 
 So long as the lake is a cesspool of corruption, no power can 
 render the streams clear and wholesome. 
 
 So in regard to human beings : if the fountain from which 
 they derive organic life, be filled with disease, that life must 
 also be diseased. And if human agency can exert no influ- 
 ence over the conditions of that fountain, it cannot affect the 
 character of the streams that come from it. If we can 
 purify the source, we can the individual men and women that 
 come from it. Can we control the existence, organization, 
 character and destiny of man, by purifying the fountain of 
 his organic life, or must we settle down in the conviction 
 
20 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 that man is the result of an agency over which we can exer- 
 cise no control? 
 
 In all my efforts to improve and perfect the human type, I 
 view men and women from the stand-point of human agency 
 — solely. So far as they are the result of a divine agency, 
 I have no power to improve them. God is beyond my con- 
 trol ; I cannot improve his nature, nor change his conditions, 
 for better or for worse. He must and will perfect his own 
 work. He does not wish us to enter into his field of labor. 
 He will attend to his own affairs, and, so far as our elevation 
 and happiness depend on his agency, the work will be done, 
 and well done. No interference of ours can make the least 
 change in him, as to his plans, his feelings, his motives, his 
 exertions, or as to the times and means of his accomplishing 
 his work. 
 
 But what ^nan can make, man can mar or mend. What 
 human agency can create, the same can improve. So far as 
 the human organism is the result of human agency, this 
 same power can mar or mend it, — can obstruct or perfect 
 its action, — 'Can bring to it health or disease, happiness or 
 misery. As he that can make a watch, or a locomotive, can 
 take it to pieces, and put it together, can obstruct or facilitate 
 its operations, so is it with the human organism ; so far as 
 its existence, character, and destiny result from human 
 agency, we can beautify or deform it, we can control its func- 
 tions, and obstruct or perfect their action. But so far as 
 that organism, including soul and body, is the result of divine 
 agency, a power over which we can never exercise control, 
 and so far as its operations depend upon that, God alone can 
 regulate its movements ; and, if obstructions impede its 
 healthy action, in any or in all of its functions, we must look 
 to God alone to remove them. 
 
MAN THE RESULT OF HUMAN AGENCY. 21 
 
 Consequently, that theory or system of anthropology, (the 
 only true theology,) which regards the human organism as 
 the result of divine agency, directs us to look to the same 
 power to remove the obstacles that impede its perfect action. 
 If it becomes diseased, by any means, and its action becomes 
 deranged and suffering ensues, God is supposed to be the 
 only power that can remove the disease, and restore the sys- 
 tem to healthy action. If scrofula, consumption, cancer, fever, 
 dyspepsia, small-pox, or any disease gets into that organism, 
 the assumption is, that the Being, on whose agency its exist- 
 ence and healthy action depend, can alone remove the disease 
 and restore it to its normal conditions. So of diseases of the 
 soul, by w^hich its healthful and happy action is deranged ; 
 anger, hatred, revenge, ambition, avarice, jealousy, envy, and 
 the many appetites and passions that afflict our souls, and 
 utterly derange them in their relations to others ; as these 
 conditions of the soul, so discordant and foreign to their true 
 life, are supposed to be the result of a power outside of man 
 and above human control, so all religions teach us to look to 
 a recuperative power aside from human agency. 
 
 So of war, drunkenness, slaveholding, murder, piracy, 
 polygamy, robbery and anarchy, — these, especially slavery, 
 that comprises them all, and is the " sum of all villany," are 
 supposed to be the result of an agency above human control, 
 and men are taught to wait patiently God's time to remove 
 them. 
 
 How to induce God to remove these diseases of body and 
 soul, and to restore the deranged functions of our physical, 
 social and moral nature to healthful and harmonious action ? 
 is the one great question of all religions. God is supposed to 
 be angry with us, and, as an expression of his hot wrath, 
 sends upon us these diseases. How to appease his anger 
 and get him into such a state of feeling towards us that he 
 
22 THE ESIPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 shall be willing to cleanse our bodies and souls from their 
 diseases and save us from the sufferings that afflict us ? This 
 is what all religions aim to show. 
 
 All religions, of the past and present, propose essentially 
 the same means to avert the wrath of God and to induce him 
 to exert his power to heal and save. Some external rites, 
 ceremonies, or sacrifices are prescribed. Fruits and products 
 of the earth are offered ; prayers and fastings, or the sacrifice 
 of some appetite or passion, or pleasure ; the sacrifice of ani- 
 mals, or of a human being, and outward acts of worship, — 
 these have been prescribed by all religions. It is supposed 
 that the heart of God can be moved to pity, and induced, by 
 such outward sacrifices, to heal our diseases of body and 
 soul, and assuage our pains and sorrows resulting from them, 
 and rescue us from hell and raise us to heaven ; or, what is 
 the same, to take away disease from the human organism 
 and give it health. 
 
 And even while praying and laboi-ing to induce God to 
 exert his power to heal them, they do the very things which 
 they know will derange their systems and produce disease 
 and suffering. They pray God to save them from the poverty, 
 the diseases, the anguish, the delirium tremens, and the pre- 
 mature death, the idiocy, the insanity and crimes, resulting 
 from the use of alcohol and tobacco, and at the same time 
 use these poisons. They pray and labor to induce God to 
 save them and their country from the results of war and 
 slavery, while they, at the same time, justify and practise 
 these deeds of blood and violence. They pray God to save 
 themselves and families from licentiousness, and at the same 
 time, live in prostitution, licensed or unlicensed, or both. 
 While they pray God to save them from anger, wrath, revenge, 
 evil-speaking, envy, jealousy, covetousness and ambition, they 
 cherish, justify and strengthen these passions. They pray to 
 
MAN THE RESULT OF HUilAN AGENCY. 23 
 
 be saved from headache, dyspepsia, cousumption, rheumatism, 
 and fever, yet habitually indulge in the very habits and prac- 
 tices which, they know, will introduce and strengthen these 
 diseases within them. They pray God to save their children 
 from scrofula, cancer, erysipelas, and all inherited diseases, 
 and to bestow on them healthy bodies and souls ; yet, so live 
 in their domestic relations, as to entail on them diseased and 
 vicious tendencies. They pray God to spare the lives of their 
 children, yet so live as to entail on them premature death. 
 Thus while they appeal to God's agency to preserve them and 
 theirs in health and life, they exert their own agency to 
 inflict on themselves and their offspring disease and death. 
 While they trust in and look to God to raise them up to 
 heaven, they put forth their own energies in efforts to plunge 
 themselves and their children into hell. 
 
 Such is the result of a theory, or system, which regards the 
 existence, organization, character and destiny of man, as the 
 result of divine agency. If more children are born to parents 
 than they can support and properly care for, their existence 
 is attributed to God, and it is considered all his doing and 
 marvellous in their eyes. In the existence of children, and in 
 their organic and constitutional birthright tendencies, human 
 agency is supposed to have no concern. If an unwelcome 
 child is born, whose existence is repulsive to both parents, 
 still, because it is supposed to exist by Divme agency, and in 
 accordance with the will of God, therefore they are urged to 
 submit quietly to the inscrutable doings of a wise Providence. 
 
 If a human being is born, and that living organism is made 
 up of the worst possible materials, and those diseased and 
 imperfect materials are most imperfectly put together, so that 
 there is no soundness in it, it is assumed that these materials 
 were selected and made up into that deformed and suffering 
 organism by Divine agency ; and the parents of such a child 
 
24 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 are exhorted to be still, and recognize, in the diseases and 
 agonies of their child, the work of a kind but mysterious 
 Providence. And when that diseased and suffering body 
 dies, the parents are again told to be still, and know that it is 
 God that afflicts them, and to kiss the rod that smites them. 
 
 So when our domestic, social, ecclesiastical, political and 
 commercial relations and associations become corrupt and 
 inharmonious, as the result of the diseases and discords that 
 afflict the bodies and souls of individuals, such corruptions 
 and discords are supposed to result from an agency over 
 which we have no control. Human agency, as connected 
 with their existence or removal, is ignored. Consequently, 
 all efforts to heal these diseases and inharmonies of families, 
 and social, religious, and political combinations, are made 
 with reference to this supposed fact, that God gave them, and 
 God must take them away ; that an outside God sends cold- 
 ness, indifference, hatred and contentions into families, and 
 that the same power must remove them ; that God gets up 
 malignant and murderous quarrels in churches, and that God 
 must put them down ; and that he may be induced to do so 
 by much praying and fasting ; that God gives war, slavery, 
 drunkenness, rapine, insurrections, rebellions, and all the 
 horrors of anarchy, and God must take them away, and our 
 work is to bless him whether he gives or takes. Thus, those 
 who view man as the result of Divine agency, as to his 
 existence, organization, character and destiny, wait upon the 
 Lord, and do nothing themselves, except, it may be, to apolo- 
 gize for and practise the very evils they want God to remove. 
 
 A Forest Scene. — Several years past, I took part in a 
 convention called to consider the following question : What 
 shall we do to be saved ? The scene was a forest. Many 
 hundreds assembled. A grand and glorious forest of great 
 
MAN THE RESULT OF HTIVIAN AGENCY. 25 
 
 extent encircled that great gathering. Of all subjects which, 
 in the dead past or the living present, have occupied human 
 thoughts, awakened human sympathy and anxiety, and called 
 into intense activity human energy, this has been the most 
 prominent and important. For what else do religions exist 
 with their array of priesthoods and churches, their prayers, 
 fastings and sacrifices, their rites and ceremonies, and their 
 holy times, places and creeds, but to answer this one great 
 inquiry? For what do governments exist, with their con- 
 stitutions and codes, their array of legislators, judges and 
 executives, and of penal and military establishments, their 
 armies and navies, and penitentiaries and gallows, but to solve 
 this simplest, most intelligible, yet most mysterious and 
 bewildering of all human problems? No question is so 
 fraught with human character ^and destiny as this. "Well 
 may men and women gather, in anxious crowds, beneath the 
 overshadowing forests and vaulted sky, and there, on God's 
 great anxious seat, ask — What sliall ive do to he saved ? 
 
 At this convention, all of every class of religionists were 
 present by public invitation. The question was propounded 
 in due form, and we were all invited to give, each, such an 
 answer as his convictions prompted. Substantially the same 
 answer was given by all till I was invited to give one. 
 I came upon the platform and said. — "Before giving my 
 opinion on the questio*n before the meeting, I would like to 
 ask and briefly answer two other questions, i. e. : (1.) Who 
 is responsible for the existence of children? (2.) "Who is 
 responsible for their organization ? " Leave being granted, I 
 said — "The first question in the children's catechism is — 
 ' Child ! "Who made you ? ' Answer — ' God.' This is false, 
 as every child understands it ; this being the impression made 
 and designed to be made, that God is res])onsible for tlie 
 existence of children. The answer releases the parents from 
 
26 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 responsibility, and places it upon an agency aside from human. 
 "Whereas, parents know that it is as false to say that God is 
 responsible for the existence of their children, ^s it would be 
 to hold God responsible for the death of a man who cuts his 
 own throat. You steal a woman and enslave her ; and your 
 child asks — ' Who made that woman a slave ? ' and you 
 answer — ' God.' You hang a man, and your child asks — 
 ' Who hung that man ? ' and you answer — ' God/ You bom- 
 bard and burn a city, and your child asks — ' Who burnt that 
 city ? ' You say — ' God.* A man drinks rum and gets 
 drunk, and the child asks — ' Who made him a drunkard ? * 
 and you say — ' God.' Do you not know this is a falsehood? 
 But the existence of children is no less the result of human 
 agency ; and men and women are as really responsible for 
 the results of their voluntary acts in one case as in the other. 
 Yet, parents persist in teaching their children, as the basis 
 of a religious education, that God is responsible for their 
 existence. Yet they all know that God is no more responsi- 
 ble for the existence of children, than he is for the death of 
 the man that the state hangs, or for the enslavement of the 
 woman that is sold by the kidnapper." 
 
 The assembly was greatly agitated. A woman who, with 
 her husband, sat .before me, arose and said in great excite- 
 ment — " Do you mean to tell me that God is not the father 
 of my children ? " " But my friend," I said, " I had hitherto 
 supposed that the man who sits by you was the father of your 
 children, and I think you would be shocked and offended if I 
 or any other should say he was not." She dropped into her 
 seat and said no more. A minister then arose and said — ■ 
 *' Mr. Wright, if I understand you, you deny the doctrine of 
 regeneration, do you not?" "Why, my good man," said I, 
 " if you had been rightly generated, you would not have 
 needed to be re-generated, would you?" He sat down to 
 
MAN THE RESULT OF HUMAN AGENCY. 27 
 
 digest an idea tliat had evidently never entered his mind 
 before. " It is far better," I continued, " more natural, more 
 economical and more divine, to expel disease from, and 
 restore health to the human organism, and to save the race 
 from crime and woe by generation than by regeneration. 
 Give to children, as a birthright inheritance, healthy and 
 vigorous bodies, and pure and noble souls, and the world's 
 huge, expensive^ clumsy and most inefficient apparatus of 
 regeneration, might, for most part, be laid aside. The 
 ecclesiastical establishments of mankind would have nothing 
 to do." 
 
 Another minister rose and said — " Mr. "Wright, you deny 
 that we must be born of God in order to inherit the kingdom 
 of heaven, do you not?" " Why, man," I said, "had you 
 been rightly and healthfully born of woman, there had been 
 no need that you should be born of God afterwards, would 
 there ? To be born of woman, the offspring of love, and with 
 a healthy body and soul, is to be born of God. The child of 
 love is the true child of God. Those who arc born with 
 healthy bodies and pure souls, are born of God, and enter 
 into the kingdom of heaven at the outset of life. It is far 
 easier to keep right after we are started right, than to get 
 right after we have been started wrong. There is far more 
 reason to hope that those, who arc born with healthy and pure 
 organisms, will retain theii* innate health and purity, than that 
 those who are born to the sad inheritance of diseased bodies 
 and souls, should ever attain to a pure and healthy organism. 
 Better, far better, that the mother should introduce her child 
 into the kingdom of heaven at its natural birth, than to be 
 brought into it by some artificial birth, produced by the 
 church, after running a course of sin and degradation." This 
 minister sat down to ponder, in silence, an idea which evi- 
 dently seemed to him very natural and replete with good 
 
28 THE EMPIRE OP THE MOTHER. 
 
 sense, but which had never before been brought home to his 
 reason and conscience. The thoughts and feelings of that 
 whole convention seemed to receive a new direction, and the 
 conviction to be deep and lasting that human agency had very 
 much to do with the human organism, not only as to its exist- 
 ence, but also as to the diseased or healthful, the painful or 
 pleasurable action of its powers and functions. 
 
 It is asked — Shall we entirely ignore the agency of God 
 in the propagation, perpetuation, perfection and happiness of 
 the human organism ? This we cannot do ; every breath we 
 draw, every pulsation of the heart, every thought and feeling, 
 every power and function of this living organism, is an ever- 
 present testimony to each one, that there is an agency con- 
 cerned in the existence, development, and happiness of 
 human beings, which is above and beyond all human control, 
 and which is the vitalizing, impelling, elevating and ennobling 
 power of human nature. Yet, while conscious of the existence 
 and presence of that power in all vegetable and animal life, 
 we cannot ignore the fact, that the existence of each and every 
 human organism is the result of a voluntaiy relation on the 
 part of the parents ; and that the conditions of that organism 
 and its character and destiny, must essentially depend on the 
 conditions of the parents, and especially of the mother. 
 
THE INBORN SAVIOTJE. 29 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 OUR SAVIOUR IS BORN WITH US. 
 
 In all my efforts to perfect the type of manlioocl and 
 "womanhood, to expel disease from the human organism and 
 make it more healthy and happy in all its functions, I view 
 man solely from the stand-point of human agency ; of self- 
 KEDEMPTION. I assume that man can and must " work out 
 his own salvation," or he never will be saved. I regard his 
 organic existence, his pre-natal and post-natal development, 
 and his character and destiny, as they are controlled and 
 modified by the power and influence of men and women. 
 
 The living human organism is before me. I see it and 
 recognize its existence and presence in myself, and in all my 
 fellow-beings around me. That organism is made up of dif- 
 ferent elements. Of all species of mechanism, natural or 
 artificial, divine or human, this seems the most delicate, most 
 complicated, the most simple, yet most mysterious and won- 
 derful ; and that with w^hich I have most to do ; and with 
 which my life and destiny are most intimately associated. 
 Its beauty, its strength, its health, its endurance, and the 
 symmetry, harmony and perfection of all its parts and opera- 
 tions, can never with impunity be undervalued, nor in any 
 way neglected ; for on these are based the life, the glory and 
 destiny of the human race. Every thing relating to the his- 
 tory of that organism, relates to me. Its history is my history, 
 its existence, growth, diseases and sufferings are mine. All 
 
30 THE E^IPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 tliat adorns and ennobles it adorns and ennobles me ; all that 
 deforms and degrades it deforms and degrades me. What- 
 ever is done to man is done to me. He that enslaves any- 
 human being, however poor and despised, enslaves me, and I 
 shall ever regard and treat him, in the same way in which I 
 should, were I the victim of his injustice- and inhumanity. 
 
 By human organism, I mean a human being, with all the 
 powers and attributes that are necessary to constitute a 
 human being. In this phrase, I include whatever is neces- 
 sary to make a man or woman, physically, intellectually, 
 socially and spiritually; all that is included in the words 
 human body and soul. Whatever causes deformity and 
 suffering to this organism, whatever disturbs and renders 
 imperfect and painful its action in any of its functions, I 
 designate by the words disease, injury, deformity or abnor- 
 mal action. 
 
 As I view this organism and examine into its interior con- 
 ditions, and the operations of its various functions, I notice 
 some facts respecting it which are as visible and undisputed 
 as is the fact of its existence. Of which are the following : — 
 
 (1.) This organism is diseased, i. e., its functions in many 
 respects are deranged, its action is irregular, discordant and 
 painful. 
 
 (2.) These diseases or defolrmities, or deranged and pain- 
 ful operations, are the result of human agency, directly oi 
 indirectly, voluntary or involuntarily, ignorantly or know- 
 ingly exerted. 
 
 (3.) These diseases can be cured only by human agency, 
 i. e., by the voluntary or involuntary, the conscious or uncon- 
 scious action of a power within the organism itself. The 
 power to cure disease and redet}m from suffering is within. 
 If cured and saved at all, man must be self-cured and self- 
 redeemed. 
 
THE INBORN SAVIOUR. 31 
 
 Thus viewing the diseases of the human organism as the 
 result of human agency, and looking to the same power or 
 agency to effect the cure, I direct my energies accordingly ; 
 and base my efforts on the fact, that here is a w^ork that must 
 be done, and that man must do it or it never will be done ; 
 that no external agency can ever improve the nature we 
 bear, and if that nature is ever to be developed into a nobler 
 type of manhood or womanhood, it must be done by the 
 *' Saviour that is born in us and with us." The soul of each 
 man or woman is the only manger in which his or her 
 Messiah can be born. 
 
 In this I plan and act as I do in other matters pcreaiuing 
 to daily life. If my watch is irregular or in any way ob- 
 structed or deranged in its operations, if a screw is loose, if 
 a chain or spring is broken, if a cog or wheel is bent or loose 
 so that the action of the watch is imperfect, and it ceases to 
 answer the end of its existence, i. c., to note correctly the 
 passing of time, I go to the same power that made it to repair 
 it. If the locomotive is obstructed in its action and fails to 
 answer the end for which it was made, we go to the person 
 that made it to mend it. If the organ is out of tune, we 
 resort to the power that made it to mend it. So in regard to 
 the diseases that affect the human organism ; the power that 
 produces them must cure them. 
 
 But it may be asked, may not the power that introduces dis- 
 ease ipto the system be unable to cast it out ? Undoubtedly ; 
 the mother may organize scrofula, consumption, dyspepsia, 
 or neuralgia into her child and have no pov»^er to cast it out. 
 By the use of tobacco, alcohol and other poisons, human 
 beings may bring into their systems various and painful dis- 
 eases, and have no power to heal them. What then? If the 
 disease be in the body, the patient must suffer until through 
 suffering he " ceases to do evil and learns to do well." 
 
32 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 It is asked, is it not true, after all, that we miist fall back 
 upon the divine agency for healing and salvation ? Certain 
 it is that, if a human organism or being, is wounded or in any 
 way diseased, no external applications can heal that wound. 
 When the body is injured by any means, no outward medi- 
 cine can ever repair the injury. The recuperator or re- 
 deemer is in that material organism. Outward applications 
 may remove obstacles to the effectual and speedy action of 
 that vital force or recuperator, but they cannot expel the 
 disease, heal the wound, join the fractured bones, or restore 
 healthy and vigorous action to the injured bodily organs and 
 functions. No drugs, nor outward appliances, can purify or 
 cleanse the blood from the corrupt and diseased matter that 
 lurks within it. All this must be done by that inward power 
 or sentinel, whose business it is to watch over the life and 
 health of the body, to keep all enemies from entering it, as 
 far as possible, and drive them out if they have gained en- 
 trance, A redeemer is organized into each body as its birth- 
 right inheritance. 
 
 So of the soul, or the intellectual, social and spiritual part 
 of that living organism, called man or woman. If, by any 
 means, it becomes deranged in any of its functions ; if it 
 becomes wounded, by harboring in it envy, jealousy, anger, 
 wrath, revenge, ambition, avarice, or by any outward demon- 
 strations of these passions, no power outside of that soul, 
 with any outward appliances, can possibly heal these diseases, 
 expel these enemies of its peace and happiness, and restore 
 it to healthy, harmonious action in its various powers and 
 functions. The laws of the soul are violated if love, justice, 
 truth, purity, benevolence, forgiveness, self-denial, self-sacri- 
 fice, which are as essential to the life and health of the soul 
 as food, air and sleep are to the body, are outraged. The 
 natural action of the soul is deranged, and suffering and 
 
THE IXBOKN SAYIOHR. 33 
 
 anguish must ensue. The recuperator or redeemer to heal 
 that soul, and restore it to health and heaven, is within itself, 
 as a part and parcel of its existence. It is the birthright 
 inheritance of every soul, as v^ell as of every body, and can 
 never die, nor become inoperative while the soul lives. It is 
 Nature's sentinel, set to watch the soul, that no enemy enter 
 its sacred enclosure, or, if it has entered, to drive it out and 
 destroy it. 
 
 Thus there is in every human being or organism, a recu- 
 perator, or saviour. Call it God, or Divine agency, if we 
 will; but whatever it is called, it is an essential clement 
 of human nature, and can never be disregarded in our 
 estimate of man, and in our efforts to cure his diseases and 
 give to him health and vigor. This recuperative power is 
 as essential a part of every human organism, as is love, 
 reason, or will. What it does, is done by human agency, as 
 really as if done by visible hands and fingers. Call it God, 
 if thou wilt, but it is God so blended with man, that they 
 cannot be separated. The action of the God, in healing and 
 saving the soul or body, is the action of the man. The 
 action of the Divine is also the action of the human agent. 
 Though it may be said that, in all our eiForts to elevate and 
 glorify the Nature we bear, it fs God who must work in us, 
 prompting us to will and to do, yet my position is true, that 
 " Man must work out his own salvation," if he is ever saved. 
 Man, not God, must " cease to do evil, and learn to do 
 well," or the heaven of innocence and love can never enter 
 his soul. 
 
 In a London Medical College, a number of students were 
 being examined with a view to obtain diplomas. To one 
 student, the examining professor put this question: "Will 
 you give a concise definition of the Healing Art?" "The 
 
 ART OF AMUSING THE PATIENT WHILE NaTUKE CURES THE 
 2 
 
34 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 DISEASE," was the answer. A truer and more comprehen- 
 sive answer was never given to that question. The Healing 
 Art ! The art of expelling disease from, and restoring health 
 to, the entire human organism, body and soul. The art of 
 saving man, or of restoring harmonious action to all the 
 powers and functions of his physical, intellectual, domestic, 
 social and spiritual nature and relations ; the art of elevating 
 men and women, as individuals, as families, as societies, 
 states, and nations, from a hell-state into a heaven-state ! 
 What is it? Simply the art of removing obstructions to health, 
 while Nature cures the disease. Cease to do evil, cease to 
 repeat the injury, while Nature, or the God within us, heals 
 the wounds already made. No power in the universe can 
 heal the human organism of its wounds, while those wounds 
 are being repeated. No power can save a man from drunk- 
 enness, lying, sensualism, hatred, slaveholding, murder, 
 piracy, or any wrong, while he persists in the practice of 
 these outrages on himself and others. No power can raise 
 a soul to heaven while it persists in plunging into hell. 
 " Cease to do evil, and do well," and Nature, or the Saviour 
 within, will heal the wounds already made. 
 
 The human being, then, or organism, is to be healed of all 
 diseases, not by an external power, but by the balm and 
 physician that are born with and in that organism, as essen- 
 tial elements of its existence. Exterior agents may help on 
 the cure by removing obstacles, but the inborn redeemer must 
 do the work, and restore the system, body and soul, to per- 
 fect and healthy action. The power within must place the 
 organism in a condition of harmony with itself, in all its 
 functions, and with all other human organisms, and with 
 every being and thing in the universe. 
 
 It will be asked, " What of the doctrine that there is no 
 recuperator, no power to expel disease, and restore health, to 
 
THE INBORN SAVIOUR. 35 
 
 save from hell and raise to heaven, within any human 
 organism? That each and every human being is without 
 any recuperator or redeeming power, in himself or herself, 
 and must depend solely on an external power to cure his or 
 her diseases, and restore him or her, to health and happiness 
 of body and soul?" I say that it is simply false; because 
 opposed to the testimony and facts of human and of universal 
 nature. There is no power in one tree to heal the wounds 
 given to another ; no power in one animal to heal the inju- 
 ries inflicted on another animal ; no power in one human 
 body to heal the wounds and cast out the diseases inflicted on 
 another human body. The life-principle or God-element in 
 each tree, animal or human body, must perform the cure of 
 all injuries and diseases inflicted on that tree, animal or 
 body. Thus far all admit the fact, that the recuperator, or 
 redeemer within us, must do the work. All that can be done 
 by any outward agency, is, to remove obstacles to the free, 
 natural, and speedy action of the saviour within. 
 
 But when we come to the soul or psychical part of the 
 man, the existence of a birthright recuperator or redeemer, 
 is ignored, and an external physician or recuperator, is intro- 
 duced, as the only power that can cure the diseases and 
 deformities of that. It is admitted that every thing that has 
 vegetable or animal life, except the soul of man, is favored 
 with an ever-present, ever-watchful, ever-active, innate recu- 
 perator or redeemer, fully competent to heal all injuries that 
 are curable ; but when we come to this, the noblest mani- 
 festation of power and wisdom, on this planet, no innate 
 redeemer is provided ; but the human soul must look beyond 
 itself, and trust to the chance of finding some external arbi- 
 trary power, to heal its diseases. 
 
 I shall assume that human souls are to be cured of their 
 diseases and sufferings and restored to health and happiness 
 
36 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTUER. 
 
 — are to be purified, ennobled and saved by the same process 
 by wbich human bodies are to be healed. I shall assume 
 that there is, in each soul, a power all-sufficient to make it 
 just what it was designed to be, and all it is capable of 
 being, and to place it, ultimately, in harmonious and happy 
 relations with all other souls and with God. The sole business 
 of practical reformers or redeemers is, to remove all obstacles 
 to the vigorous action of the innate, birthright saviour — that 
 it may bring its energies all to bear on the great work of 
 inducino- the ignorant, mistaken man or woman to " cease to 
 do evil and learn to do well" — that the redemption of the 
 soul may be perfectly wrought out, and made complete in 
 rin-hteousness and be filled with all the fulness of love and 
 of God. -T 
 
 I wound a tree. The recuperator within instantly goes to 
 work to heal the wound. But, if I keep repeating the 
 wound, no cure can be performed. I cut my finger ; the 
 recuperator or saviour born in and with my body, instantly 
 goes to work to repair the injury. But the only condition 
 of success is, that I cease to repeat the wound. No power 
 within or without the body can ever eifect a cure if I con- 
 tinue to repeat the wound. So of the soul ; I wound it ; 
 instantly that recuperator, saviour or redeemer, that was 
 born with and in my soul, rallies to drive out the enemy, to 
 heal the wound, and restore health and soundness to it. But, 
 I repeat the injury, and keep repeating it, and thus render 
 all efforts to heal and to save my soul ineffectual. No God, 
 no Christ, whether within or without, — no church, no state, 
 no priests, nor politicians, no creeds nor constitutions, no 
 prayers nor tears, can ever redeem my soul, except on condi- 
 tion that I " cease to do evil and learn to do well." Ceasing 
 to do evil and learning to do well, is redemption in the only 
 sense in which it can practically be ours. The more per- 
 
THE INBORN SAVIOUR, 37 
 
 fectly our souls are eudowecl with an organic, constitutional 
 tendency to good, the more potent will be this inborn saviour 
 to save us. 
 
 Man has, then, within himself a saviour, born with and in 
 him. This saviour, or redeemer, or God within us, is ever 
 saying to us — Do thyself no harm ! And if through 
 ignorance or other cause we do harm ourselves in body or 
 soul, this inborn Jesus, this birth-right saviour, is ever saying 
 to us — "Come to me, take my yoke upon thee, and thou 
 shalt find rest." What yoke ? This, and this only : Cease 
 to do evil — learn to do avell. 
 
38 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PHYSICAL DESTINY TIXED BY ORGANIZATION. 
 
 The Human Race is a Unit. We are alike in the general 
 features and attributes of body and soul. The bones, nerves, 
 muscles, and membranes of all, are alike in their structure, 
 location, action and uses. We are alike in the general 
 structure and tendencies of our souls. All are under similar 
 laws, having similar wants, a similar origin, common sympa- 
 thies and a common destiny. Such is the likeness, that a 
 human being can be instantly distinguished from every other 
 animal. Yet no two are alike ; each individual having some- 
 thing that serves to distinguish him from each and everjr. 
 other. In the color and expression of the eyes ; in the form 
 and expression of the countenance ; in the tones of the voice ; 
 in all the manifestations of will, reason, affection, sympathy 
 and conscience, and in all outward demonstrations of intellect 
 and affection, there is something which enables us to distin- 
 guish one from another. We are warranted in the conclu- 
 sion that — Nature never re-peats herself ; but, in each one, 
 presents a new type of manhood or womanhood. While 
 each has all the general elements and attributes that distin- 
 guish the human being from every other species of animal, 
 there is a something in the form and manifestations of each, 
 that serves to give to him or her a marked individuality. 
 
 All have reason, but in each, reason differs in degree and 
 direction ; all have power to love and sympathize, yet in 
 
DESTINY DETERMINED BY OKGANIZATION. 39 
 
 each it differs in depth, in earnestness, in endurance and 
 direction. All have will, but in each, how different its mani- 
 festations ! All have veneration and conscience, but how 
 different their direction and manifestations in each ! The 
 conscience of one directing him to do that which that of 
 another directs him to condemn. The conscience of a Chris- 
 tian and of a Mohammedan, of an abolitionist and a slave- 
 holder, of the self-abnegationist and the self-preservationist ; 
 how different in its direction and its susceptibility ! 
 
 Whence this difference ? There is a natural cause that is 
 subject to human observation, and, to some extent, to human 
 control. Why is one healthy and another diseased — one 
 hopeful and another desponding — one cheerful and another 
 melancholy — one generous and another ungenerous — one 
 suspicious and another confiding — one noble and another 
 ignoble — one happy and another unhappy ? Why is one re- 
 vengeful and another forgiving — one loving and lovable, and 
 another unloving and unlovable — one honest and another 
 dishonest — one selfish and another unselfish ? Why is one 
 abandoned to theft, drunkenness, licentiousness, violence and 
 murder, and another incapable of being tempted to commit 
 these crimes ? Wliy has one great power to resist the influ- 
 ence of deleterious and debasing material, social and moral 
 surroundings, and another no power? Why is one a Jesus 
 of Nazareth, and another a slave-hunter or a pirate? 
 
 Behold the pestilence that walketh in darkness — the de- 
 struction that wastes at noon-day ! In the same family, one is 
 taken and the others left. In neighborhoods and towns, here 
 and there, one is taken and others left. Side by side lie the 
 dead bodies of the infant of a day and of the man of seventy, 
 and by them lie the bodies of the maiden of sixteen and the 
 matron of sixty. Why is this ? Is the cause in the outward 
 surroundings, or in a defective internal structure? The 
 
40 THE ESIPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 diseased suiToundings that lay many physical human organ- 
 isms in the dust, have no power at all over others ; solely, 
 because some have more innate power to resist them than 
 others, and because a tendency to imbibe disease is stronger 
 in some than in others. 
 
 Go visit yon School, Academy, or College ; observe the 
 difference in the strength, aptitude, and manifestations of in- 
 tellect. Go to yon play-ground ; observe the variety in the 
 tempers, dispositions, passions and propensities of the jubilant 
 group there assembled. Their untamed hearts and exuberant 
 spirits, all shout out the great chorus of Humanity, yet how 
 various their modes of manifestation. How each differs 
 from each and every other in character and destiny. One is 
 rough, another polished ; one gentle, another ungentle ; one 
 is loud and boisterous, another quiet and peaceful ; one 
 obtrusive, another unobtrusive ; one is irritable or sulky, or 
 revengeful, another calm, self-possessed, kindly forbearing, 
 and for^iviniir. 
 
 Whence this difference in the character and destiny of 
 human beings ? Where must we look for the force or influ- 
 ence that gives character to their thoughts and feelings, their 
 appetites and passions, their plans and actions, and that issues 
 in such different results in individuals, who in general charac- 
 teristics are so much alike ? Whence the difference in the daily 
 and hourly destiny of each ? Is it caused by an interior or exte- 
 rior force ? Is it to be found in the innate, internal structure 
 and development of each individual organism ; or in the 
 material, intellectual, social and spiritual surroundings? Is 
 it a power over which the individual has a conscious, volun- 
 tary control, or one whose influence is ever-present, ever-felt, 
 and ever-potent for good or evil, but before which the indi- 
 vidual soul is powerless ? Is the power that thus controls the 
 manifestations of intellect, affection, passion, appetite and the 
 
DESTINY DETERMINED BY ORGANIZxiTION. 41 
 
 interior and exterior action and life of the entire organism, 
 constitutional and organic — or is it adventitious and edu- 
 cational ? Behold the revelations and manifestations of the 
 living human organisim, in all their varieties and ramifications 
 in agriculture, mechanics, commerce, science, literature, art, 
 in all domestic, social, religious, political and commercial 
 relations — in war, slavery, drunkenness, and every species 
 of crime and immorality ! Is the power that produces these 
 results, so various, so diverse and complicated, within or 
 without that living, human mechanism? 
 
 Passing by the nursery, the family, the school, the church, 
 the state, conventionalism, and all other material, social, reli- 
 gious, civil, intellectual, exterior surroundings, I would direct 
 attention to the organization itself, and say — 
 
 As IS THE Organization — so will be the ciiail.icter 
 
 AND DESTINY OF THE INDIVIDUAL MAN OR WOMAN AND OF 
 THE RACE. 
 
 By organism or organization, I mea« the whole man or 
 woman — including soul as well as body. The soul, I shall 
 assume, without argument, is an organized structure as well 
 as the body ; and has organic conditions and tendencies ; an 
 organism within an organism, the former being the vitalizing, 
 motive power of the latter ; a kingdom within a kingdom, 
 the former combining, adjusting, directing and ruling the 
 latter. The former is the i^sTjcMcal, the latter the i^hysical 
 kingdom. Both harmoniously blended, make the united 
 kingdom of God and man — the body being the kingdom of 
 God, as truly as the soul. 
 
 Is it a truth, a simple fact of human life, that as is the 
 organization, so will be the character and destiny of the indi- 
 vidual ? Or, in other words — Is destiny determined by 
 ORGANIZATION? Is the action, or manifestation of the soul, 
 2* 
 
42 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 of the man or woman determined by organic conditions and 
 constitutional tendencies ? 
 
 In pursuing this inquiry two questions arise. (1.) Are 
 human character and destiny at all affected by organization ? 
 (2.) If so, to what extent? 
 
 That our character and happiness are affected, more or 
 less, by organic conditions and tendencies, is attested by the 
 experience of each and every one. It is simply a matter of 
 consciousness, a self-evident truth, which no argument can 
 refute or confirm, nor make more intelligible. As to the 
 extent of that influence, opinions vary — some affirming that 
 human organisms or beings have absolutely no more control 
 over their interior or exterior actions and manifestations, than 
 has a clock or locomotive ; and others, that within the limits 
 of fixed and beneficent laws, they can and do control their 
 destiny. 
 
 Consider the organic conditions of the body. What influence 
 do these, daily and#hourly, have on the interior and exterior 
 life and happiness ? Do they have any ? The life of each 
 man or woman is a fact, demonstrating that the character and 
 destiny of each one are momentarily and essentially affected 
 by such conditions ; that the intellectual, affectional and pas- 
 sional manifestations of the soul depend, essentially, on the 
 organic conditions of the body. Certain conditions of the 
 body predispose to headache. What those conditions are, we 
 may not be able to tell precisely ; yet we know that headache 
 and freedom from that pain cannot result from the same phys- 
 ical conditions. The same cause cannot produce effects so 
 dissimilar ; the same tree cannot produce fruit so unlike and 
 contradictory. Mothers, subject to headaches, seldom fail to 
 organize into their children, a tendency to the same, so that 
 whatever affects the digestion or the nerves unfavorably, 
 ends in this disease. Certain organic bodily conditions neces- 
 
DESTINY DETERMINED BY ORGANIZATION. 43 
 
 sarily result in the suffering called dyspepsia. Though we 
 may not, in our present ignorance be able to determine what 
 are those conditions that result in this kind of suffering, yet 
 we do know that the pain and the absence of it, cannot result 
 from the same organic conditions. Mothers affected by this 
 disease, seldom fail to organize it into their children. So 
 cancer, scrofula, and consumption, are generally the results 
 of certain organic physical conditions and tendencies. The 
 pain and suffering designated by these words, must of neces- 
 sity, always result from similar bodily conditions. 
 
 We may not, in the present state of our knowledge in 
 regard to human physiology, be able to say what conditions 
 will necessarily produce these sad and painful effects ; yet, 
 we do know that they must be different from those which 
 produce opposite results. The fact that a man has those 
 conditions which must of necessity result in such sufferings, 
 can, as yet, be known only by the fact, that the results exist. 
 "Will knowledge ever be so increased, that the conditions may 
 be known independent of the results ? That we may know 
 before the results appear, that such and such bodies will 
 surely be affected by such and such diseases'? So of all 
 physical diseases and sufferings, resulting from organic con- 
 ditions ; we know there is a defect in the system somewhere, 
 or these results would never be experienced. The conscious- 
 ness of the pain demonstrates the existence of a defect in the 
 system. 
 
 Physical disease and death may result from causes that are 
 not organic. They may be produced by external causes. 
 So far as the particular disease or suffering is concerned, the 
 organic conditions may be sound and productive of conscious 
 joy. These conditions may be such that existence, in itself, 
 may be conscious and uninterrupted bliss, a succession of 
 exulting sensations. Every throb of the heart, every bound- 
 
44 THE e:mpire of the mother. 
 
 ing pulse may be heaven. Yet, exterior influences may bear 
 upon us, to produce disease and pain, and entirely defeat the 
 end of those healthful, happy, organic conditions. The 
 organic action may be perfect in itself, and yet the indi- 
 vidual destiny be made most painful, through external 
 surroundings. Bat the diseased conditions of material sur- 
 roundings, may be and often are resisted by a superior, 
 internal power, that protect the body from their influence. 
 But this vital energy or force must be organized into that 
 body, before birth, or it can hardly be created afterwards, by 
 any process of outward discipline. The power, or ability to 
 resist must be there, or no resistance can be made. No one 
 can exert forces that he does not possess. 
 
 It is within the certain knowledge of every one, that the 
 above-named diseases and others, and the sufferings and 
 deaths resulting from them, not unfrequently, spring from 
 causes that are purely organic ; causes, which must result in 
 pain and death, however healthful and happy may be the 
 surroundings. 
 
 These physical diseases are manifested in infants and 
 young children ; and they have to be subjected to the conse- 
 quent suffering. No wisdom, tenderness and care of the 
 mother or nurse, after they are born, can wholly avert the 
 painful destiny. The organism is diseased, and the moment 
 the child assumes an independent existence, and begins to be 
 sustained by the action of its own breathing and digestive 
 apparatus, that diseased condition produces its necessary 
 results — pain, and often death. 
 
 Two children begin the journey of life, the same hour, and 
 under the same outward surroundings and influences. One 
 is without pain, happy and joyous, and in every expression of 
 its face and motion of its limbs, demonstrates that it feels ex- 
 istence to be bliss and only bliss. The other is distorted with 
 
DESTINY DETERMINED BY ORGANIZATION. 45 
 
 pain, and is wretched. In its every expression and motion, 
 it manifests its sufferings, and its protest against such a pain- 
 ful, wretched existence. The secret of it is this : one is 
 blessed with a healthful, harmonious organization ; the other 
 is cursed with a diseased, inharmonious one. We often hear 
 of birthright tendencies to disease — of inherited cancer, 
 scrofula, neuralgia, or consumption. The phrase is most 
 expressive and easily understood. It simply expresses inher- 
 ited conditions of the physical organism which necessarily 
 result in the particular kind of suffering expressed by these 
 words, when exposed to certain surroundings. Diseased, 
 organic tendencies may be counteracted, and never be allowed 
 to culminate in actual manifestations and suflering, by a wise 
 regulation of outward influences. So of healthful, organic 
 tendencies — these may be, and often are destroyed, by inju- 
 dicious external treatment. 
 
 It is appalling to see the living, sensitive, and most sus- 
 ceptible organism of a child, soon as born, committed to the 
 absolute control of a mother or nurse, who knows and cares 
 nothing about its internal structure, and how to regulate its 
 external treatment and surroundings, in order to its healthful 
 and harmonious development. That tender organism may 
 be formed of tolerably healthy materials, and those materials 
 be harmoniously and happily put together ; but the mother 
 knows not how to feed, clothe and handle it. Instead of 
 acquainting herself with human physiology and anatomy, 
 which knowledge is above all price in the mother, and without 
 which no woman is fitted or worthy to be a mother, she spent 
 her girlhood and youth, it may be, in administering to her 
 vanity, her ambition, or in the pursuit of that knowledge and 
 those accomplishments, which can be of little use, except to 
 attract admiration and elicit applause from the worthless. 
 Millions, that are born with, tolerably healthy and vigorous 
 
4.6 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 bodies, are doomed to a life of suffering and a premature 
 death, by this ignorance of woman in regard to human phys- 
 iology and anatomy ; a knowledge of which can alone fit her 
 to be a mother or a nurse. But, after all, the responsibility 
 of this sad and most baneful and disgraceful ignorance, rests 
 mainly, if not solely, on man. Man never thinks of this as a 
 necessary qualification in the one he chooses for a wife, and 
 the mother of his children, but rather scouts it. Fathers take 
 no thought nor care to have their daughters instructed in this 
 most important of all knowledge, for the mother of the race ; 
 their daughters being taught that it is far more important to 
 know how to crochet cats and dogs, and parrots, than to 
 know the interior structure of the human organism, and how 
 to develop it in health and beauty. Brothers feel no interest 
 in the education of their sisters in this science. The church 
 and state have not half the concern in educating the daughters 
 of the laud how to treat the human organism in infancy, in 
 orcTer to its vigorous and healthy development, which they 
 show in teaching their sons how to treat and develop, most 
 perfectly, the organic existence of horses and cattle, of pigs 
 and poultry. 
 
 It is perfectly truthful to say of this or that bodily disease, 
 — it is often organized into us. Consumption is organized 
 into one, neuralgia into another, cancer into another, scrofula 
 into another, and so on, in regard to every disease with which 
 tlfe human body is organically afflicted. The physical suffer- 
 ing and death resulting from such organic diseases, result 
 from causes so fixed that years will be necessary to counter- 
 act them, and restore the organism to soundness. Or, perhaps, 
 restoration is impossible, and that poor, deformed, suffering 
 organism never knew an hour's freedom from pain, from the 
 day of its birth to that of its death. 
 
DESTINY DETEKMrXED BY ORGANIZATION. 47 
 
 Amid all the experience and observation that each and 
 every one has, can any one be so bold as to say that our 
 physical destiny is not at all affected by our organic condi- 
 tions ? I think not. About one-third of all that are born in 
 New England die, as to corporeal existence, under five years 
 of age. About two-thirds under fifteen. And this terrible 
 destruction is the result of certain diseased physical conditions 
 and tendencies. Surely organic conditions do most fatally 
 determine the physical destiny. Even while they live, daily 
 and hourly pain is their bitter portion. Every hour their 
 physical destiny is affected by their organic conditions. In 
 youth, in manhood or womanhood, and even in extreme old 
 age, is physical destiny determined by birthright physical 
 conditions. For how many that die, physically, in these 
 seasons of life attribute their death to inherited diseases? 
 How many suffer thirty, fifty, and seventy years, keenly 
 and terribly, from such diseased tendencies of the physical 
 organism? We must not, cannot, shut our eyes to these 
 facts of life. They meet us at every step. Disease, pain 
 and death are organized into us, and made essential elements 
 of human existence, to a large part of the civilized portions 
 of the race. 
 
48 THE EittPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PSYCHICAL DESTINY FIXED BY ORGANIZATION. 
 
 The Human Soul. — What can be said of that? What 
 is it? Of what is it composed! What are the facts in 
 regard to its modes of action, its nature and destiny? It 
 would be easy to deal in fiction ; but I would discard fiction, 
 and look at facts. The soul is something that sees and hears, 
 thinks and feels. It is not a thought, but that which thinks ; 
 it is not a feeling, but that which feels. I shall assume here, 
 as I have done, that the soul is a substance, a something and 
 not nothing. I shall assume that it is an organized struc- 
 ture, and shall designate it the psychical organism — to dis- 
 tinguish it from the body or physical organism. I shall call 
 its destiny the psychical destiny, as I do that of the body, 
 the physical destiny of man. The question may arise. Of 
 what is the soul composed ? We cannot tell. We know not 
 the substances of which it is composed, nor how they are put 
 together. We know it only through its manifestations as 
 these are made known to our consciousness, and to our bodily 
 senses, i. e., to our interior and to our exterior senses. By 
 its fruits we know it, as these are recognized by our interior 
 and exterior experiences. As we know that air, light, elec- 
 tricity and magnetism exist by their fruits, so do we know 
 that the soul exists by its fruits. But we can no more know 
 of what materials the soul is composed by observing its 
 
DESTINY DETERMINED BY OPvGANIZATION. 49 
 
 fruits, than vre can of -what magnetism is composed by seeing 
 its fruits. 
 
 Judged by its manifestations, I should conclude the soul to 
 be a compound of material elements, as really as is a bar of 
 iron ; differing, of course, in kind ; the soul being composed 
 of materials so refined and so potent, that when put together 
 in a certain manner, and placed in certain conditions, it is 
 capable of producing all the phenomena attributed to the 
 soul ; that it can see, hear, feel, taste, smell, think, reason, 
 will, love, hate, worship, &c. 
 
 The soul is capable of a great variety of manifestations. 
 We classify them, and call one class Reason, another AA'ill, 
 another Love, another Conscience, another Passion, another 
 Hunger, another Thirst, another Hatred, &c. But it is the 
 same soul, acting in various ways, towards different objects, 
 and for different ends. So we group the faculties of the 
 soul, and call one group Intellectual, another Affectional, 
 another Social, another Moral, another Domestic, another 
 Religious. But it is one and the same psychical organism 
 that performs all these operations, making itself manifest 
 towards different objects in different ways, and for different 
 purposes. But, however we may analyze and classify its 
 operations, and reason about its modes and actions, yet we 
 have the same reason to consider it in the light of organized 
 matter, composed of different elements, put together in cer- 
 tain proportions, and that its organic existence is produced by 
 the action of fixed laws, that we have to consider the body 
 in this light. 
 
 Does the soul form the body or the body the soul ? Does 
 the physical man produce the psychical, or the psychical the 
 physical ? It seems most consonant with reason and facts 
 to say that the soul forms the body, the psychical the physi- 
 cal man ; that the body, or exterior organism, is an appendage 
 
50 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 to the soul, or interior organism. The soul, not the body, 
 is the conscious, thinking, feeling, vitalizing power ; the real 
 man or woman. The power to attract, absorb, assimilate 
 and construct, is in the soul, not in the body. The soul, not 
 the body, is the motive, plastic power to gather up the mate- 
 rials and construct the body. The body for the soul, not the 
 soul for the body ; the physical for the psychical, not the 
 psychical for the physical man. 
 
 What the soul is, I know not ; what it does, I know, by 
 consciousness, and by seeing and hearing through my interior 
 and exterior senses. Man ! What is he ? A being com- 
 posed of two distinct organisms, both of which are made up 
 of material substances, one within the other ; each essentially 
 dependent on the other for health .and happiness, while in 
 this state ; an outer and inner kingdom ; the interior acting 
 through the exterior, and through it manifesting its needs, 
 its thoughts, its emotions, and all its operations, so far as it 
 can be done, but still capable of an mdepe0ent existence 
 ivlien the exterior shall have been cast off. The psychical 
 organism, the inner man, can be seen and heard by the eye 
 and ear of the soul, as the physical organism, or outer man 
 can be seen and heard by the eye and ear of the body. As 
 the physical body can be seen, heard and felt by other phys- 
 ical bodies, so the soul, or psychical body, can be seen, heard 
 and felt, by other souls that have cast off the outer man, and 
 entered upon the life within the veil. As I know what Mag- 
 netism does, at least some things that it does, but know not 
 what it is, so I know many things which the soul does, but 
 not w-hat it is. Behold what it does ! What are the Gov- 
 ernmental, Ecclesiastical, Educational and Commercial Insti- 
 tutions of the world? What are houses, towns, cities, ships, 
 agricultural, manufacturing and mechanical operations and 
 implements? What are all those things that are designed 
 
DESTINY DETERMINED BY ORGANIZATION. 51 
 
 to compel the forces of nature to work for man? Beliold 
 every thing that man has invented and done to supply the 
 demands of his body and soul ! These all are but outward 
 manifestations of that soul, that gives vitality and power to. 
 the body. All that man does, individually and collectively, 
 is but the work of the human soul. What power is in that 
 interior organism ! Whatever is found on earth, as the 
 product of human ingenuity, skill, and action, is but the 
 manifestation of this unseen, intangible agent. 
 
 Many questions may arise which fancy and curiosity may 
 suggest, and imagination answer. Are souls generated as 
 bodies are ? Or, are they created by some direct, arbitrary 
 exertion of power, a soul for each body ? At what time in 
 the developmental process does the soul take possession of 
 the body? These and many other questions relating to the 
 human soul, may arise in the mind of the reader, but they are 
 not pertinent to my great object, which is to answer this one 
 question — Is the destiny of the soul or psychical organism 
 determined by its organization? In this respect does the 
 analogy hold good between the soul and body ? This I will 
 do what I may to answer. 
 
 I have assumed that the soul, like the body, is an organic 
 structure, exactly corresponding with the exterior organism ; 
 its vitalizing and motive power permeating and vitalizing 
 every particle of matter in the body — answering to it in form 
 and size, and through it making itself visible, audible and 
 tangible in all its infinitely varied and diversified operations. 
 I have shown that the destiny of the body depends on the 
 kind of materials of which it is composed and on the manner 
 in Avhich they are put together. Do the healthy action and 
 happy destiny of the interior organism depend on the same 
 causes? Is this unseen, intangible, most mysterious organ- 
 ism — this vitalizing, motive, thinking, emotional power, 
 
52 THE EMPIRE OP THE MOTHER. 
 
 which, in fact, constitutes the man or the woman, like a watch, 
 dependent, for its healthy and happy destiny, on the perfec- 
 tion of its materials, and of its workmanship ? If the mate- 
 rials of which a Avatch is made be ever so perfect, and they 
 be clumsily put together, there will be no harmony of action 
 between the parts, and no confidence will be had in it as an 
 indicator of time. It will be worthless, inasmuch as it can- 
 not answer the end of its existence. Then, again, if the 
 workmanship be ever so perfect, and the materials be unsound 
 and unsuitable for such a purpose as a watch, then its action 
 will be irregular ; it will be worthless. It cannot be trusted. 
 Is it thus with the thinking, feeling, rational part of human 
 nature? The psychical organism of man, when made up of 
 right materials, unmixed with alloy, but put together without 
 order or harmony between the several parts ; can its destiny 
 be noble and happy? If it ever attains to harmony and 
 happiness, must it not be through much suffering ! But 
 suppose the materials to be unsound and unfit, and the put- 
 ting together be perfect ; would not the result be the same ? 
 Must not that soul reach the kingdom of heaven through 
 much tribulation ? It must. Life, to all such unsound and 
 discordantly formed souls, must spring from death. But when 
 that which thinks, feels, vitalizes, contrives and does all that 
 is designed and done by men, women and children, is composed 
 of sound and fitting materials, and these are harmoniously put 
 together, then the soul comes forth upon the theatre of life, 
 proudly and exultingly takes its place amid the great universe 
 of living beings, with a crown of fadeless beauty and radiant 
 glory before it, and gi'andly and majestically walks on to take 
 possession. Will any human soul come short of this bright 
 destiny ? If so — why ? May it not be owing, mainly, to the 
 imperfection of its materials and of the manner of their 
 making up? In a word, to a diseased organization? The 
 
DESTINY DETERMINED BY ORGANIZATION. 53 
 
 history of the human soul is but a series of facts to demon- 
 strate the truth of the position, that the destiny of each soul is 
 determined by its orrjanization and its constitutional tendencies. 
 
 In this investigation I ignore all discussion of the question 
 of Free Agency and individual responsibility. The con- 
 sciousness of each man or woman will take care of that. 
 This answers all questions, scatters all doubts, and clears 
 away all darkness in regard to that long and anxiously mooted 
 subject. No matter how strong, nor how multitudinous, nor 
 how learned and astute the arguments may be that are 
 adduced to prove that man, as to character and destiny, iS 
 the mere result of chance, or of circumstances ; merely the 
 result of a power over which he has no control, and there- 
 fore irresponsible for his actions, do what he may ; the con- 
 sciousness of every human being instantly pours contempt 
 upon them all, and makes it certain that, within fixed 
 limits prescribed by the laws of his being, he is free to do, or 
 not to do, and responsible for what he does ; that within 
 certain boundaries, prescribed by Nature, the truth and justice 
 of the following requirement are self-evident : Obey and 
 LITE, DISOBEY AND DIE. Self-coudemnation and self-inflicted 
 suffering, with the consciousness that they are deserved, will 
 ever accompany our abnormal acts, despite all arguments to 
 prove that we could not help but do them, and that we ought 
 not to suffer for what we were obliged to do. 
 
 I have remarked that the Human Race is a Unit, and in 
 all essential characteristics alike, so that any one of that Race 
 may be instantly distinguished from every other species of 
 animated existences. A human being cannot only be distin- 
 guished from every other animal, but each one can be recog- 
 nized as different from each and every other human being. 
 That which marks the difference between human beings, and 
 enables us to distinguish one from another, is no less certain 
 
54 - THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 than that which distinguishes man from all other beings. 
 Though all have essentially the same needs and capabilities, 
 yet each one differs from each and every other in his modes 
 of manifestation, or in some way. 
 
 Intellectual Powers. — We group together certain 
 operations or manifestations of the psychical organism, and 
 designate them as intellectual powers. How deeply these 
 powers are affected by organic conditions, we may not be 
 able to comprehend fully ; but the history of the human 
 intellect is but one great fact, going to demonstrate the inti- 
 macy of the relation between the intellectual organization 
 and the intellectual destiny of the soul. This lesson is 
 learned most fully from man's intellectual history — that as 
 are the organic conditions of the soul and body, so will be 
 the action of the intellectual faculties both in individuals and 
 communities. As to Direction ; Why are the intellectual 
 powers of one directed to one pursuit and of another to 
 another? See the intellect of Zera Colburn directed to 
 mathematical calculations ; that of Fulton to the steam- 
 engine ; that of Galileo, to Astronomy ; that of Newton, to 
 Natural Philosophy ; that of Locke and Edwards, to Meta- 
 physics ; that of one to Chemistry, of another to Geology, of 
 another to Botany ; that of an Audubon, to Ornithology ; and 
 that of Franklin, to Electricity. Why was the intellect of 
 Jesus consecrated to the salvation, and that of Napoleon to 
 the destruction of human beings ? Why are the intellectual 
 powers of one devoted to Agriculture, of another to Mechan- 
 ics, and of another to Commerce? See the various objects 
 towards which various minds are directed. Trace the his- 
 tory of Agriculture, or the art of producing the raw mate- 
 rials necessary to feed, clothe, and house man ; trace the 
 history of Manufacturing, or the art of preparing those raw 
 
DESTINY DETEEjnNED BY OKGANIZATIOX. 55 
 
 materials for use ; trace the history of Commerce, or the art 
 of transporting these necessaries of life from town to town, 
 from city to city, state to state, and from continent to conti- 
 nent. Then trace the history of Governments and Religions, 
 with all their appendages ; the history of Printing, of Books, 
 Newspapers and Writing ; the history of Law, Medicine and 
 Theology, Railways and Electric Telegraptis, the soul using 
 the flashing thunderbolt to herald its thoughts and affections 
 around the world. See what the human intellect has done to 
 create and perfect means to save, to destroy, and to govern 
 human beings, and to feed, clothe, and house them ! Do this, 
 and say, then, if all this variety, this antagonism in results, 
 of the action of man's intellectual powers, can be accounted 
 for except on the principle, that Destiny is determined by 
 Organization ? 
 
 It is vain to seek to account for this by educational and 
 adventitious influences, brought to bear on the intellect after 
 birth. The direction of their powers, in many, is manifested 
 before these influences are brought to bear upon them. Wit- 
 ness Zera Colburn, Mozart, Ilaydn, Napoleon, and above all, 
 the blind slave-child, who has show^n such astonishing power 
 of music. Indeed, every infant in the nursery, every child 
 in the school-room and on tlie play-ground, shows that the 
 human intellect is directed in its pursuits by a power above 
 and behind all post-natal education. The education that 
 gave direction to the intellect of Moses, and of Jesus, of 
 Mohammed, of Krishna, of Luther, of Columbus, of Hume, 
 Knox, Voltaire, and of John Brown, was given in the pre- 
 natal state. So, as to the degree of intellectual activity, as 
 to acuteness, quickness and endurance. How much more 
 acute, intense and enduring the action of the intellectual 
 powers of some minds than others ! No post-natal influences 
 can explain these phenomena ; only that pre-natal influence, 
 
56 «HE EMPIRE OP THE MOTHER. 
 
 which controlled the organization before birth, can explain 
 them ; giving to one an organic tendency to one pursuit, and 
 to another, an organic bias to another ; and giving to this, 
 the power of intense, concentrated, and enduring activity, and 
 to that, the power only of feeble, shattered, iiTegular and 
 inefficient action. 
 
 How many cMldren are ruined by the efforts of parents to 
 compel them to educate their intellects to pursuits towards 
 which they have no organic or constitutional tendency ! By 
 a close observation of facts, all, having the control of children, 
 should seek to acquaint themselves with their organic and 
 constitutional tendencies, and then give them all possible 
 assistance to enable them to pursue those occupations that 
 most coincide with their birthright tendencies. Persons sel- 
 dom succeed well when they attempt to pursue a calling for 
 which they have no natural bias, and no hearty relish. 
 
 As TO THE Appectional and Sympathetic Powers. — 
 Who can read the history of these powers of the soul and 
 observe their action in all ages, and among all tribes and 
 peoples, and not feel how much our affections and sympathies 
 are controlled by our organic, psychical conditions? How 
 variously directed ! One being to one object, and another, to 
 another ; this being lovable to one, that to another ; the object 
 that seems most lovable and beautiful to one, seeming most 
 unlovable and deformed to another ; the woman that is earn- 
 estly sought as a wife by one, being as earnestly shunned in 
 that relation by another ; the God that seems worthy the 
 supreme love and worship of the Jew, seeming most repul- 
 sive to the gentle Nazarene ; what, as God, calling out the 
 highest love and devotion of a Mohammedan or Brahmin, but 
 exciting only scorn and contempt in the Christian ; the Christ, 
 the Saviour of Christendom, being the cunning impostor and 
 
DESTINY DETERMINED BY ORGANIZATION. 67 
 
 juggler of the Mussulman and Hindoo, and what is lovable 
 and sacred to a Romanist, being contemptible and degrading 
 to the Protestant. What can account for this difference in 
 the direction of our sympathy and love? It is vain to 
 attribute it to a difference in the post-natal influences that 
 bear upon them, for it is more marked in infants and children 
 than in adults. See how these are attracfed by some and 
 repelled by others ! Watch them in their pairings and 
 matings, in their friendships and enmities ! So as to degree, 
 fidelity, depth, intensity and devotion of affection and sympa- 
 thy. How deep, silent, constant, confiding and long-suffering 
 are they in some ; and how shallow, clamorous, obtrusive, 
 fickle, jealous, irritable, impatient and short-lived, in others ! 
 How various the modes of manifestation ! In one, love and 
 sympathy flowing out in pet names, and terms of endearment, 
 in kisses and personal caresses, as well as in deeds of justice 
 and kindness ; and in others, only in practical good works, 
 but never in kisses, caresses and endearing words ! 
 
 Illustrations of this are found wherever the relations of 
 husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister, friend 
 and friend exist. And different peoples have distinctive 
 modes of expression. IIow diflerent the Italian and the 
 Turk, the Frenchman and the German, the Irish and the 
 Scotch, the Spaniard and the African, the Yankee and the 
 Chinese, in the nature and manifestations of their affections 
 and sympathies. No difference of climate, soil, social condi- 
 tions, food, and education, can account for this diversity. 
 There is a power behind them all, unseen, unheard, but ever 
 felt and ever potent, which determines these varied outward 
 expressions of the love clement. These sympathetic and 
 affectional phenomena can be accounted for only on the dif- 
 ferences in organic conditions and constitutional tendencies 
 of the soul, created before birth. 
 3 
 
68 •THE EINXPIKE OP THE MOTHER. 
 
 So OF THE Passions and Appetites. — Note their 
 actions in individuals and communities, in different tribes and 
 kingdoms. Watch their manifestations among the Indians 
 of the Rocky Mountains, and their neighbors the Mormons ; 
 among the Yankees, the Chinese and Russians ; in the Slave 
 States and Barbary States ; among land pirates and sea 
 pirates ; Laplanders and the Bedouin Arabs. Each tribe, 
 state, nation and people, have their peculiar ways of mani- 
 festing anger, envy, jealousy, revenge, ambition and avarice. 
 How various the manifestations among children ! Some are 
 born with an organic tendency to tea, coffee, tobacco, alco- 
 hol, opium, and other narcotic and alcoholic stimulants, and 
 some with a deep-seated aversion to these. Some have a 
 constitutional tendency to steal and rob, to murder and 
 piracy. Man-stealing or kidnapping, is a prominent charac- 
 teristic of the Slave States ; man-killing, of the people of 
 England, France, and of all nations, and armies of disciplined 
 man-killers are organized and maintained to gratify this pro- 
 pensity. Ask for the cause, and it will be found in the organic 
 conditions of the souls of the different people. Theft being 
 organized into the soul of one, murder and piracy into that 
 of another ; the spirit and idea of freedom into one, slave- 
 hunting and slave-driving into another. Drunkenness, war, 
 negro-hatred into one, total abstinence, peace, and respect for 
 human rights, into others. So of Presbyterianism, Method- 
 ism, Unitarianism, Univei'^alism, Calvinism, Mohammedan- 
 ism and Hindooism, and sectarisms of all kinds are organized 
 into the soul before birth, and become its organic conditions. 
 Religious views and customs are organized into the souls of 
 all people, more or less. A revengeful, sensual, cautious, 
 coarse organization, will have corresponding conceptions of 
 God. Each must see God in the mirror of his own soul. 
 If that mirror be pure, bright, and polished, the soul will 
 
DESTINY DETERMINED BY ORGANIZATION. 59 
 
 have a clear, briglit conception of God; but* if our mirror 
 be obscure, we shall have an obscure conception of God. So 
 our worship will correspond to our organization. The health- 
 fully organized soul, alone, can worship God in spirit and in 
 truth. Those whose souls glow with love and good will to 
 man, will see and worship God in men, women and children ; 
 those who have little regard for man, will see and worship 
 God in times and places, and in rites and ceremonies. 
 Religion refers especially to the relations between man and 
 man. As are our organic psychical conditions, so will be 
 our conceptions of man and his relations to man. The 
 gross, sensual, psychical organism, will regard the distinction 
 of sex as a mere means of sensual indulgence, and marriage 
 simply as a license to render it legal and respectable. He 
 will see woman through the medium of his own animalism. 
 "What shall be said of tendencies to idiocy and insanity? 
 Do these result from defects in the organization of the soul, 
 or of the body ? In malformations of the body which render 
 it impossible for the soul to manifest itself truly and health- 
 fully through it, or in permanent defects in the psychical 
 organism? This question will one day receive an answer. 
 I cannot give it, nor can any one in the present imperfect 
 knowledge of the relations between the body and soul. But 
 as to the lying, deceit, dishonesty, injustice, licentiousness, 
 theft, robbery, murder and tyranny of mankind, these may 
 hereafter be found to result more from defects in the organic 
 conditions of the soul, than in outward surroundings. 
 
 The following is from Draper's "Human Physiology": 
 " During the process of the development of the intellect of 
 man, various psychical persuasions in succession arise, which 
 are frequently imputed to education or tradition, but of which 
 the origin is undoubtedly to be traced to the organization. 
 Those general ideas that are found all over the world, among 
 
60 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 all races of mankind, whatever may be the climate in which 
 they live, their social condition or religious opinions, — ideas 
 of what is good and evil, of virtue, of the efficacy of penance 
 and of prayer, of rewards and punishments, and of another 
 world ; these, from the uniformity of their existence in all 
 ages, and in all places, must be imputed to the stamp that 
 has been put upon our cerebral organization. Universal 
 opinions are not the result of accident, nor always of tradi- 
 tion. They are often creations of the mind, arising from 
 peculiarities of constitution." 
 
 This, then, is Man ; a being composed of two organic 
 structures — one within the other — giving to it life and mo- 
 tion. A kingdom within a kingdom — the treasures of which 
 are, as yet, but little known. The Interior constructs and 
 controls the Exterior kingdom, under the direction of that 
 God who controls all things. The body exists for the soul, 
 not the soul for the body. The soul is the permanent, ever- 
 living, ever-progressing organism, the immortal Man or 
 Woman ; the body is but an incident to the soul, as a gar- 
 ment is to the body. The body for the soul, kot the 
 SOUL for the body ! Therefore, never sacrifice the soul 
 to the body. Never dishonor nor degi-ade the soul to supply 
 the demands of the body, or even to preserve it from outrage 
 and death. Keep the soul pure and sacred, whatever becomes 
 of the body. In an harmoniously organized body and soul 
 there can be no conflict. The demands of each will cor- 
 respond with the demands of the other. 
 
 These two organisms — the physical and psychical, or the 
 body and soul — are ever acting and reacting each upon the 
 other. Every action of the body, every pulsation of the 
 heart, every effort of the brain, lungs, stomach, and the various 
 vital functions of the body, affect the condition of the soul. It 
 is very hard for the soul to keep in a serene and happy state 
 
DESTINY DETERMINED BY ORGANIZATION. 61 
 
 "while the body is tortured with nervous headache, or jumping 
 toothache, or agonizing dyspepsia. So the soul affects the 
 body. "When the psychical organism is exercised with grief, 
 sorrow, anger, revenge, despondence, or any intellectual or 
 affectional derangement, the physical organism is always more 
 or less affected thereby. The health and life of the body 
 must necessarily be deeply affected by those physical condi- 
 tions and tendencies that were organized into it before birth. 
 So the health and life of the soul must be deeply affected by 
 the pre-natal tendencies that w^ere organized into it. So the 
 destiny of each organism must be deeply affected by the 
 organic conditions of the other. 
 
 The power that controls the organization must, to a great 
 extent, if not entirely, control the character and destiny of 
 the man or w^oman ; inasmuch as human life, in all relations, 
 results from organic conditions and constitutional tendencies, 
 more than from any or all outward surroundings. "Where is 
 that power that controls the organic conditions and birthright 
 tendencies of human beings? If we can find this, we find 
 the power that moulds the character and shapes the destiny 
 of individuals and nations. 
 
62 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ORGANIZATION DETERMINED BY MATERNAL CONDITIONS. 
 
 In the two preceding chapters I have sho^vn, that, destiny 
 IS determined by organization, ■\yhatever influence, 
 material, domestic, social, political, ecclesiastical, commercial 
 and literary surroundings may have on human character 
 and destiny, it is mainly exerted indkectly. Home Influences 
 do more to give tone and direction to our feelings, thoughts 
 and aspirations, and to our outward actions, and to shape our 
 hourly, daily, and eternal destiny, than all other external 
 influences combined. But what controls men and women in 
 the selection of life-companions that are to decide what those 
 home-influences shall be? For the influence of home, for 
 good or evil, depends, solely, on the relations that exist 
 between the husband and wife. If love is the bond, the 
 influence will be good ; if anything else, it will be evil and 
 only evil. In no relation is the truth of the maxim, that 
 destiny is determined by organization, so clearly made mani- 
 fest, as in that of husband and wife. In entering into the 
 conjugal relation, in their loyalty to it, and in their treatment 
 of each other in it, the phenomena of life can be accounted 
 for, only, by regarding them as the results of the organic 
 conditions of the actors in the strange, inexplicable drama. 
 No adventitious, outward causes, can account for these often 
 
ORGANIZATION — MATERNAL CONDITIONS. 63 
 
 unexpected and sad results. These home-influences, instead 
 of directly controlling the organization of the husband and 
 wife, are controlled by it. So that the character of any 
 domestic circle may be known by the character of the organ- 
 izations of the individuals that compose it, especially by that 
 of the husband and wife ; for, as is their organization, so is 
 that of their children. What controls men and women in 
 seeking wives or husbands ? Organic conditions — mainly. 
 
 So of Social Relations^ Outside of Home. External influ- 
 ences do, indeed, affect us deeply in our daily and hourly 
 life and destiny, but, only, indirectly. But what controls us 
 in the selection of friends and associates? What guides us 
 in our treatment of, and manifestations to one another, in 
 social gatherings, and in our social intercourse generally? 
 Our organization, unquestionably, to a great extent ; and 
 the character of our associates is, generally, a pretty sure 
 test of our organic conditions, and our birthright, constitu- 
 tional tendencies. Thus, instead of our organic conditions 
 being controlled by our social surroundings, these, and the 
 destiny they bring to us, are determined by them. As is 
 our organization, so will be our social relations and destiny. 
 
 So of our Religion. True, our destiny is affected by our 
 theological opinions and ecclesiastical relations ; but it is no 
 less true that these opinions and relations are determined, 
 mainly, by our organizations. No matter to what sect of 
 religionists we belong, it will be found that we have a con- 
 stitutional, pre-natal tendency to the opinions and practices 
 of that sect. The Calvinist will be found to have an organic 
 bias towards a stern God of vengeance ; a Methodist, towards 
 loud, vociferous, outward demonstrations ; a Quaker, towards 
 a quiet, contemplative mode of worship. So throughout all 
 religions ; as is our organization, so will be our religious 
 opinions and customs. 
 
64 THE EMPIRE OP THE MOTHER. 
 
 So of our Occupations, our Amusements, and our Political 
 Relations. As a general rule, as is our organization, so will 
 be our occupations, our amusements, and our political opin- 
 ions and practices. Instead of being directly determined by 
 these, our organic conditions determine what they shall be. 
 The domestic, social, political, religious, literary and com- 
 mercial relations and institutions of Massachusetts and South 
 Carolina, constitute an index to the organic conditions and 
 constitutional tendencies of their respective peoples ; the 
 bias of the people of the former is to knowledge, justice^ 
 freedom and civilization ; that of the people of the latter is 
 to ignorance, injustice, slavery, theft, robbery and barbarism. 
 The people of Massachusetts are prone to live by honest and 
 honorable labor ; South Carolina is prone to live by theft and 
 robbery, and by making merchandise of her own sons and 
 daughters. 
 
 So of Climate, Soil, and all Maierial Surroundings. These 
 do not directly give character to the organic conditions of 
 the people, but our organization gives character to them ; 
 i. e., these affect us according to our organization. As are 
 our organic conditions, so will be the impressions made on us 
 by our material surroundings. The soul, or psychical organ- 
 ism, is the mirror presented to us by the mother, to enable 
 us to behold the exterior world ; and, by a fixed law of our 
 being, our conceptions of external objects depend on the 
 condition of that mirror. It is in that psychical mirror that 
 we behold all objects outside of ourselves. Our conceptions 
 of God, and of eternal life ; our conceptions of man, and his 
 relations to God and immortality, and to his fellow-beings ; 
 our conceptions of the distinction of sex, of its nature and 
 its object, and of the relations between men and women, and 
 of the mission of woman to man, and of man to woman ; in 
 a word, all our conceptions of ourselves, in our relations to 
 
ORGANIZATION — IHATERNAL CONDITIONS. G5 
 
 the material, intellectual, social, and spiritual universe, so 
 full of the vast, the beautiful, the sublime, the mysterious 
 and incomprehensible, are mainly characterized by those 
 organic conditions and constitutional tendencies that our 
 mothers gave to us in our pre-natal life. A healthful, har- 
 monious psychical organization, or soul-mirror, will reflect 
 external objects to us as they are ; but to a diseased, discord^ 
 ant organization, all must seem distorted. 
 • Thus, organization determines the character and destiny ; 
 but who or what determines the organization ? The power 
 which controls that, controls its results. Man makes the 
 state ; who makes the man ? Man organizes and administers 
 the ecclesiastical, governmental, literary and commercial 
 institutions of the world ; who organizes and administers the 
 man ? Man gathers up materials and builds houses, palaces, 
 temples, ships, towns and cities ; but who gathers together 
 the materials and builds up the man? Man, having selected 
 fitting materials, constructs railroads, locomotives, steam- 
 engines, watches, clocks, thermometers, barometers, com- 
 passes, telegraphs and chemical apparatus, and all the 
 machinery designed to prepare the raw material for food and 
 raiment ; but who gathers together the fitting materials and 
 forms them into that most delicate, most mysterious, wonder- 
 ful and potential of all structures — a living, rational, aspir- 
 ing, immortal man ? But one answer can be given to these 
 questions ; i. e., the Mother ! So far as human agency is 
 concerned, the Mother makes the Man ; the father's influ- 
 ence being exerted, after conception, indirectly through the 
 mother. My object being to consider the Empire of the 
 Mother, I shall not now discuss the influence of the father. 
 
 " God gave to man dominion over the beasts of the fields 
 the fowls of the air, and the fish of the sea," but to whom 
 did God give dominion over man ? Not to kings and queens, 
 3* 
 
66 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 nor to presidents and potentates ; not to parliaments and 
 congresses, nor to priests and politicians ; not to church and 
 state, nor to armies and navies ; not to the pulpit and the 
 press, nor to the school and the college — but to the mother. 
 These all have their place as means of controlling human 
 character, and shaping human destiny ; but to the mother 
 hath God said, " thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and 
 thy dominion is without end." The God of Nature never 
 committed the destiny of man, as individuals, as families, as 
 societies, as states and nations, to a soulless corporation called 
 a church or government ; but, as to the exercise of direction 
 and control over the interior and exterior life of man, God 
 says to the mother, " under me, thine is the kingdom, and 
 the power, and the glory." The mother, not the pope nor 
 the king, not the church nor the state, is God's vicegerent, to 
 determine the place of each upon the scroll of destiny. 
 
 But how does the mother thus hold the sceptre of dominion 
 over individuals and states? What are the agencies by 
 which her power is exercised ? She rules the world, not by 
 brute force ; for armies and navies, with their array of means 
 to mutilate and kill human bodies, constitute no part of her 
 power. Military force, in her kingdom, is utterly ignored as 
 an element of strength. Nor does she rule by arbitrary, 
 external authority ; nor yet by capricious, arbitrary legisla- 
 tion. The machinery of violence, by which human bodies 
 are ruled by man, is unknown to her sovereignty over the 
 race. The same may be said of the ballot ; she rules no 
 more by ballots than by bullets. She does indeed rule the 
 great human family, in and out of the body, by laws ; but 
 these laws are not enacted by Congress nor Parliament ; nor 
 are they engraven on parchment ; nor are they executed by 
 constables and sheriffs ; but, through the powers and func- 
 tions of her body and soul, they are enacted by the All-wise, 
 
ORGANIZATION — MATERNAL CONDITIONS. 67 
 
 the All-just, and All-powerful ; and, through her means, are 
 engraven on the body and soul of each one, as essential con- 
 ditions of life and health ; and they are self-executing. As a 
 birthright inheritance, the Mother presents to each child a 
 code of just and perfect laws, which, if unobstructed, would 
 work out for it a sublime and happy destiny. Blessed is that 
 child whose birthright code is not dishonored and defaced by 
 the presence of unconstitutional, unnatural, pernicious, tem- 
 porary by-laws. 
 
 The august drama of human life ; the secret, unseen causes 
 and history of human character and destiny, may be written 
 in two short sentences, i. e. : Destiny is determined by 
 
 ORGANIZATION ORGANIZATION IS DETERJHNED BY MATER- 
 NAL CONDITIONS. The story of the internal and external 
 experiences of individuals, and of states and nations, is told 
 in these two expressions. The destiny of man, whether act- 
 ing as an individual, or as a church, nation, or empire, is 
 wrapt up in his organization ; the character of that organi- 
 zation is hidden away in the silent depths of the mother's 
 organism. Every human being is a living fact to demonstrate 
 this. Those who are accustomed to trace the phenomena of 
 human life, as manifested in individuals and combination, to 
 their antecedents, will find no lack of facts to illustrate this. 
 Take the following. 
 
 Organic tendency to Useful Labor, D. P. is a woman whose 
 experience is instructive. She lives but to labor ; not for 
 love of gain, but from the love of useful action. She never 
 wastes her energies in labors that benefit no one ; but they 
 are ever directed to something useful. A restless, anxious 
 spirit, w^hich she cannot control, is ever prompting her to 
 useful and benevolent action, in household labors, in out-door 
 exercise, and in actions that are beneficial to her neighbors. 
 From childhood, the same uncontrollable dcsii-e to be useful 
 
68 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 to somebody, has led her onward and governed hen actions. 
 The Cause. From her conception to her birth, one irrepres- 
 sible desire governed the activities of her mother. All her 
 energies of soul and body were directed to useful ends. She 
 was ever on the alert to find opportunities to do good to 
 somebody. She literally went about doing good, and ever 
 found it "more blessed to give than receive." The same 
 tendencies appeared in her child at a, very early age. Even 
 as a child, she was ever devising some plans that had in 
 view the good of others, and had an extraordinary aptitude 
 to execute her own benevolent purposes. Hers was a rich 
 and glorious inheritance. Would that a similar organization 
 could be the birthright legacy of every child from its mother. 
 How soon would human beings cease to inflict injuries on 
 others for their own benefit. 
 
 The Child Visitor. Another fact to illustrate the power 
 of the mother over the organic conditions of her child. L. F., 
 ten years old, never can rest at home. She is ever running 
 here and there, restless as a wild bird in a cage, just from the 
 woods. She ever pines to be abroad. Is ever teasing her 
 mother to let her go visiting. Knows no rest, no enjoyment, 
 except in going from house to house, making calls, and get- 
 ting up parties among her mates. Visiting seems to be the 
 one overmastering thought and passion of her life. Cause. 
 The father was a hard man, a drinking man, and the terror of 
 his wife. During her child's entire pre-natal life, to avoid him 
 the mother was abroad, making calls, going from house to 
 house, getting up parties and making visits. Her entire 
 waking hours, during that period, were thus spent. She 
 saved her child from the drunken father's influence ; but she 
 stamped upon it the stamp of a restless visitor, and unfitted 
 her for any steady, useful employment. It will prove a sad 
 legacy to the child, as she passes on to womanhood, and 
 
ORGANIZATION MATERNAL CONDITIONS. 69 
 
 enters into the natural relations and encounters the stern 
 realities of life, as a wife, a mother, and actor in the great 
 drama of humanity. 
 
 In every family and neighborhood are to be found facts 
 that strikingly illustrate the truth of the position, that, organ- 
 ization is determined by maternal conditions ; that the con- 
 ditions of the maternal organism do, and must, of necessity, 
 to a great extent, determine the character of that organiza- 
 tion which is developed within it. Indeed, each and every 
 man or woman is but a fact which serves to illustrate and 
 confirm this truth. 
 
 3Iaternal Associations. Some thirty years ago it was my 
 privilege to take an active part in the formation of many 
 Maternal Associations — the object of which was to receive 
 and give light in regard to the function, the responsibilities 
 and duties of maternity. Only mothers composed the associ- 
 ations. For two years I met with these associations, aver- 
 aging over one a week, and recorded in my private journal 
 the subjects that were discussed in them, the average attend- 
 ance being* about twenty mothers. The mothers used to give 
 accounts of the peculiar characteristics of their children ; of 
 their dispositions and tempers ; their aptitudes and inclina- 
 tions in regard to food, drink, dress, amusements, and occu- 
 pations ; of their peculiar tendencies to this or that occupation 
 or amusement. The transmission of physical and psychical 
 conditions and qualities from mothers to their children ; the 
 pre-natal education and gestational life and history of their 
 children were freely discussed, and the bearing of the 
 impressions made on children before birth, on their character 
 and happiness afterwards ; the bearings of maternal condi- 
 tions during the pre-natal life of children on their organiza- 
 tion, and on the character and destiny that should result 
 from it ; the pre-natal rights of children to a love origin, and 
 
70 THE EJIPIRE OP THE MOTHER. 
 
 to heultliy bodies aud healthy souls, and to a welcome into 
 life from both parents and from the entire community ; to 
 what extent the character and destiny of a child can be 
 known from a knowledge of the diseases that lurk in the 
 mother's blood, and of the intellectual, social and spiritual 
 conditions of her soul ; the relation between the mother's 
 food, drink, labor and amusements and the conditions of her 
 blood, and between her blood and the organic existence, and 
 the character and destiny of her child ; these and like sub- 
 jects were freely and anxiously discussed in those meetings 
 of mothers. The plan of keeping a written record of their 
 physical and psychical conditions and experiences during the 
 pre-natal development of their children, was suggested to those 
 mothers ; that they might be able to see to what extent the 
 post-natal character and destiny of those children corresponded 
 with the conditions and experiences of their mothers during 
 their pre-natal life. Many of those mothers adopted that plan ; 
 and the results were astounding to themselves. Not one of 
 those mothers but was thoroughly convinced that Organization 
 was determined by maternal conditions. Some of those jour- 
 nals were put into my hands to be read, and that I might take 
 from them such extracts as I could make useful in discussing, 
 publicly, the pre-natal rights of children, the responsibility of 
 mothers, and their empire over the character and destiny of 
 the race. I learned more concerning the hidden sources 
 of the peculiarities and manifestations in the individual, do- 
 mestic, social, political and religious life of man, from those 
 mothers, than I had ever learned before from books, schools 
 and colleges. If intelligent, loving and observing mothers 
 would keep records of their physical and psychical conditions 
 during the pre-natal life and education of their children, it 
 would be of more value to the world, and do more to give a 
 true insight into the nature, character and destiny of man, 
 
ORGANIZATION — MATERNAL CONDITIONS. 71 
 
 than histories of states and nations. The value of maternal 
 associations for a free and full interchange of thought and 
 feeling, touching the power of the mother over the organiza- 
 tion of her child, and through that, over its character and 
 destiny after its birth, can never be overestimated. When 
 the Age of Fiction, in regard to man, his character, his rela- 
 tions and destiny, shall have given place to the Age of Fact, 
 and these shall be regarded as the results of antecedents that 
 may be controlled, to a great extent, by human agency, then 
 will the empire of woman, as a mother, be known and appre- 
 ciated. It will be seen that her organism is the hiding-place 
 of that power which watches over and controls the destiny of 
 individuals and of nations ; and that, through the mother, not 
 through the church, nor the state, the kingdom of God is to 
 be incarnated in human life, and his " will be done on earth 
 as it is in heaven." If the prayer, "■ Thy kingdom come^^' is 
 ever to be answered on earth, it must be answered, not by 
 the church, nor the state, but by the mother. To the mother, 
 under God, must be ascribed the glory of that event, if it 
 ever occurs. 
 
72 THE EMPIRE OP THE MOTHER. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ORGANIC EXISTENCE — WHERE FORMED? 
 
 The question arises — Has the mother any power over the 
 quality of the materials of which the organism of her child, 
 body and soul, shall be formed, and as to the manner in 
 which these materials shall be put together ? The question 
 is direct, plain, and easy to be understood ; but put in words 
 such as we use in regard to any structure, organic or inor- 
 ganic, whether the result of human or divine agency. 
 Whether we look at an elephant or a fly, a man or a muscle, 
 a ship or a clock, three questions naturally arise — Who 
 made it? Of ivhat is it made? How is it made? So in 
 regard to the human organism, or person ; in examining it, 
 we naturally ask — Who made it? Of ivhat is it made? Hoiu 
 is it made? I am considering human beings as to their 
 existence, character and destiny, solely from the stand-point 
 of human agency ; more especially of the agency of the 
 mother. 
 
 I have said that the parents of each child are responsible 
 for its existence, inasmuch as it is the result of their united 
 and voluntary agency. The mother is as really responsible 
 for her child's existence as is the gardener for the existence 
 of a rose, as the mechanic for the existence of a house, as 
 the farmer for the existence of a field of wheat, which had 
 never existed but for their agency. Arsenic is an enemy to 
 
ORGANIC EXISTENCE WHERE FORMED? 73 
 
 animal life. I make it, take it, and die. Who kills me? 
 Food is a law of life. I refuse to take it, and die. Who 
 kills me? No one doubts my responsibility here. My 
 death is the result of my own agency. 
 
 So the act of the mother is the antecedent of the child's 
 existence. Every mother should feel that the whole respon- 
 sibility rests on her, as really as if no other being had to do 
 with it ; for so i1> does. I do not say she is alone in the 
 responsibility, for she is not ; the same amount of responsi- 
 bility rests with the father. He does not sliarc it with her. 
 There can be no division, no sharing of responsibility in the 
 Chancery of Heaven. A million vote for slavery, or for 
 war. Each of them is responsible before God for all the 
 wrongs and outrages that belong to those evils, and without 
 which they cannot exist. If the slaveholder is a thief, a rob- 
 ber, a kidnapper, a ruffian and a land-pirate, the man who 
 votes for slavery is the same, and ought to be and will be, ere 
 long, so regarded and treated. So the responsibility of the 
 child's existence rests wholly and undividedly with each pa- 
 rent. The mother is as responsible as if it resulted from 
 her agency alone ; so is the father ; for the exertion of their 
 power to give existence to a child was a matter of choice 
 and not of necessity. The responsibility of each is independ- 
 ent of the other. 
 
 But the question — Of what materials is that organism 
 made? and how are they put together? would lead to a 
 description of its chemical analysis and of the laws of combi- 
 nation, which, though of deep interest, is not pertinent to my 
 object. But the question regarding the mother's power over 
 the hind of materials of which it shall be composed, and the 
 manner of their combination, exactly accords with the end at 
 which I aim. In answering this query I must recur to some 
 facts relating to our organic existence and conditions. One 
 
74 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 of these facts is suggested by the inquiry — ivhere is the 
 Human Organism made up ? To this query but one answer 
 can be given, i. e., 
 
 Fact First. — The organic existence of every Child 
 is begun and completed within the organism of the 
 Mother. 
 
 The question is not, where was the first human organism, 
 or the first man and woman developed or constructed? 
 However interesting this might be, as a matter of specula- 
 tion, we have no facts to guide us in such an investigation. 
 As well ask — Where was God developed? so far as facts 
 are concerned. It may be that in the future progress of 
 mind in knowledge, facts will be brought to light to justify 
 us in some fixed and certain conclusions in regard to the 
 place where the first human germs were developed. I think 
 we may, from ascertained facts, assume the truth of the fol- 
 lowing conclusions : — 
 
 That the germ existed before the human organism existed. 
 As the acorn existed before the oak, so the germ existed 
 before the man. 
 
 That the distinction of sex is in the germ ; that in the pro- 
 cess of development, wherever that may have been effected, 
 the masculine germ assumed an organism, adapted to express 
 its peculiar nature and to respond to its peculiar demands ; 
 and the feminine germ, an organism, suited to its nature and 
 necessities. So that, by a fixed law of sexuality, wherever 
 the one assumes a living, visible, tangible form, the other 
 must accompany it as a necessity of its being, in order to 
 meet an ever-present demand of its existence, and to its 
 perfection and happiness ; to its complete salvation. 
 
 That the human organism — body and soul — is formed of 
 elements, or substances, that are inherent in and derived from 
 this planet. Whatever these elements may be, and whatever 
 
ORGANIC EXISTENCE WHERE FORMED? 75 
 
 manifestations tliey may make after they are constructed into 
 human forms, they are all derived from this planet ; so that 
 man is, in truth, of the earth. No matter what names are 
 given to that organism and to different parts ; call one part 
 body, and another soul ; one part flesh, and another spirit ; 
 one part matter, another mind ; one mortal, the other 
 immortal ; one human, the other divine ; it is all the same : 
 all men and women, in their entire nature, are made up of 
 elements derived from this planet. So of every mineral, 
 vegetable, and animal production on the earth ; the substances 
 of which they are made, are derived from the planet on which 
 they exist. So in regard to all the planets that traverse 
 space ; whatever forms exist in Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, or 
 any other planet, derive the materials of which they are com- 
 posed, from that planet on which they have their being. 
 
 Waiving all further remarks on these topics, we know the 
 fact, that the organic existence of every human being is 
 begun and completed within the organism of the mother. 
 From the moment in which she takes charge of the germ of 
 a new life, and it is located in its natural and appropriate 
 place for development, a process is commenced, which, if 
 undisturbed, must result, by a fixed law of generation, in the 
 formation of a human body and soul. Elements or materials 
 are collected and gathered around that germ, and so arranged 
 and blended with it as to develop from it bones, muscles, 
 nerves, brains, heart, lungs, stomach, liver, eyes, ears, and 
 every organ essential to make a human body ; and also a 
 soul, or life-principle, or vital and motive power, with all its 
 powers to think, reason, will, love, and to present all the 
 phenomena and manifestations that demonstrate the presence 
 of a human soul. All these essential ingredients and attri- 
 butes of the human organism are developed from that germ 
 by a process of selection, accumulation, assimilation, distribu- 
 
76 THE EMPIRE OP THE MOTHER. 
 
 tion and organization. In the brief space of nine months, 
 that which was scarcely visible to the naked eye, and which, 
 when seen through a microscope, seemed but an oblong or 
 square cell, called the germ-cell, assumes the form of a 
 human being, with all the organs and attributes of a man or 
 a woman. 
 
 This most mysterious, inexplicable and wonderful process 
 of developing that minute cell into a human body and soul, 
 is begun and completed within the consecrated precincts of 
 the maternal organism, and beneath the pulsation of the 
 maternal heart. Consider the nature, the character, the 
 power and destiny of the being that is to result from the 
 process that is going on within that sacred enclosure ! See 
 the part which it must act in the great drama of life ; the 
 theatre on which it is to act, and the countless millions that 
 are to be its companions ; consider its pathway into the 
 unending future, the obstacles that lie in its way, and the 
 stern and terrible conflicts it must encounter. Who can con- 
 template the results of that developmental process, without 
 an overwhelming sense of the gi'and and the august, as well 
 as of the most endearing affection and tenderness ! All 
 that is pure, holy, loving, gentle, and God-like in our nature 
 is called into action, as we trace the history of a life-germ 
 of humanity in its process of development into a living 
 human organism, wdthin the organism of woman. All that 
 have been born of woman in the dead Past, all who consti- 
 tute the living Present, and all who are to exist on this planet 
 in the hidden Future, have passed, or must hereafter pass, 
 through this unfolding process within her organism ; the 
 Holy of Holies of that great temple of humanity Avhich is to 
 enlarge its dimensions, and grow more symmetrical and beau- 
 tiful in the cycles of Eternity. From woman's organism 
 must come those organic conditions and inborn tendencies 
 
ORGAls^C EXiStEXCE — WHERE FOEilED ? 77 
 
 that are to shape the character and control the destiny of the 
 future of the human race. 
 
 Max ! Behold the organism of woman ! Look upon it 
 tenderly and reverently, for within it God has hidden the 
 scroll of destiny to individuals, families, states and nations. 
 There God has laid away the book of his laws for the gov- 
 ernment of the race. Oh man ! spare the person of woman. 
 Harm it not. But ever anxiously labor to develop it in all 
 its functions, into healthful and vigorous activity, and into 
 the perfection of grace and beauty. 
 
 Husband ! Behold the organism of your wife. Treat 
 it tenderly and reverently. Proudly and graciously bow 
 your manly soul before it in heartfelt and earnest worship ; 
 for within that form, so fondly cherished, and so protectingly 
 held to your heart, God has hidden your life as a husband 
 and a father. As a husband, would you have your heart 
 cheered, your life made joyous, and your home your heaven, 
 by the sustaining sympathy, the joyous presence, and all- 
 trusting love of a healthy, happy wife ? As a father, would 
 you have around you the glad hearts, the bright faces, and 
 merry voices of healthy children ? Then most tenderly and 
 reverently cherish and protect from all harm, the person of 
 your wife ; for within that sacred temple, so beautiful and 
 consecrated to you, are concealed the purity, the peace, the 
 dignity, the glory, the very angel guardian of your home. 
 
 Father ! Tenderly and reverently guard and cherish 
 the organism of your daughter. In infancy, childhood and 
 youth, anxiously and constantly protect it from harm, as you 
 would your own soul ; for within that organism is written 
 the history, not only of individual men and women, but of 
 the homes, the states and kingdoms of the Future. Be 
 tender of that form, so beautiful and sacred to you, for from 
 
78 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 it are to issue life or death, joy or sorrow, to the people of 
 the future. 
 
 Brother ! Tenderly and reverently cherish the organism 
 of your sister, and guard it from all harm. Let no injury, 
 no disease, no suffering come to it which you can ward off. 
 Consecrate your youthful zeal, your brotherly sympathy, 
 affection and energy, to shield that loved and beautiful sis- 
 terly form from all harm, for in it may be enshrined the 
 destiny of unborn millions. 
 
 What are banks, railways, currency and commerce, in their 
 relations to the power, the stability, prosperity and perpetuity 
 of states and kingdoms, compared to the organism of woman? 
 The organic existence of all their subjects with all the condi- 
 tions and tendencies, the beauty, health and vigor that pertain 
 to it, must be begun and completed in that organism. 
 
 Why should not governments look after the health, the 
 beauty, the perfection, and the power of that source from which 
 all their citizens are to derive their existence, their health, 
 energy and powers of endurance, and the state its prosperity, 
 its protection, and glory ? They should. The health of the 
 Maternal Organism will be a prominent, perhaps the most 
 prominent object of consideration to a government that con- 
 sults the physical, intellectual, social and spiritual elevation 
 and happiness of its subjects, and that wisely seeks to save 
 its citizens from the miseries of drunkenness, war and 
 slavery ; to avert from them disease, and give them health, 
 and to insure to them life, liberty and happiness. When 
 legislators and statesmen shall see and appreciate the relation 
 of the maternal organism to the peace, prosperity, stability 
 and glory of states and nations, then will governments make the 
 health of woman the object of their most anxious solicitude. 
 
 Is it a wonder that the human soul should cling so tena- 
 
ORGAiaC EXISTENCE WHERE FORMED? 79 
 
 ciously, SO tenderly and so trustingly to the mother, within 
 whose sacred and consecrated organism the organic existence 
 of all are perfected? Within which, whatever is beautiful, 
 symmetrical, delicate, complicated and vigorous in our bodies, 
 and whatever is rational, intuitional, clairvoyant, loving, 
 thinking, living and immortal in our souls, was organized 
 into us and made essential attributes of corporeal and incor- 
 poreal, of present and eternal life? Is it strange that the 
 purest, most sacred and endearing affections of the human 
 heart should twine around the maternal organism ? Whether 
 in the bright looks and elastic movements of the young 
 mother, or in the matronly dignity of middle life, or the 
 decay and decrepitude of age, that sacred form is encircled 
 with hallowed beauty, and radiant with glory. Man may 
 set at nought the restraints of church and state, but the power 
 of the mother can never be wholly and permanently cast off. 
 This, like the power of God, holds him in a grasp which 
 never can be broken. 
 
 In this planet exist all the materials that are necessary to 
 the formation of a living human organism, with all its capa- 
 bilities and its distinctive attributes. These materials must 
 be gathered up, prepared, put together, assimilated, organ- 
 ized and vitalized, and made into living men and women. 
 This work, so full of love and tenderness, so delicate, so 
 complicated, so august, so replete with the destiny of indi- 
 viduals, and of states and kingdoms, and before which the 
 formation and administration of governments sink into insig- 
 nificance, must be begun and completed not only within the 
 maternal organism, but under the direction and control of 
 that plastic power by which it is vitalized. Of all its attri- 
 butes or powers, this plasticity of the maternal organism, 
 this power to gather up, to combine, to assimilate, and 
 organize the elements of this planet into human forms, and 
 
80 THE EMPIRE OP THE MOTHER. 
 
 to vitalize those forms, and make them living and immortal 
 souls, is the most mysterious and sublime. Man is not 
 invested with that power ; it is the sole and distinctive attri- 
 bute of woman. Man may gather up the materials of the 
 earth that are scattered here and there, and build ships and 
 houses, locomotives, railroads, clocks, watches, cities and 
 palaces ; states and nations may gather up materials and 
 construct and manage armies and navies, with all the appa- 
 ratus of war ; but men, whether acting as individuals or 
 states and kingdoms, can never gather up, combine and 
 organize the materials of this planet into the bodies and 
 souls of men and women. This power, the most energizing 
 and living with which God has endowed human beings, is 
 woman's sole and exclusive prerogative ; and it invests her 
 with majesty and glory, second only to that which surrounds 
 the Almighty. The power of Victoria as a Queen, is con- 
 temptible and evanescent compared to the power of Victoria 
 as a Mother. As a Queen, all she does is comparatively 
 trifling in value and evanescent in duration ; but, as a Mother, 
 she gathers up the forces and materials, innate in the planet, 
 and fashions them into living organisms but little lower than 
 angels, crowns them with glory and honor, and stamps on 
 them the image of God, and the impress of eternity. 
 
 This power, I have said, is woman's exclusive prerogative. 
 The father has no direct control over the organization of the 
 child after conception. The process of organization does not 
 commence till the mother takes charge of the germ, and it is 
 placed within reach of its proper nutriment. Therefore, the 
 father can influence the organic existence of the child, only, 
 by his power over the germ, before the mother takes charge 
 of it, and by influencing it, through her thoughts and feelingSj 
 after conception. Before the mother takes charge of the 
 germ, the father may stamp upon it his own peculiarities) 
 
ORGANIC EXISTENCE WHERE FORMED? 81 
 
 whether for heahh or disease, whether for happiness or 
 misery ; and these peculiarities may become prominent char- 
 acteristics of the child after it is born ; but after conception, 
 the father can have no control over the organization of the 
 child, except through his power over the affections and sym- 
 pathies of the mother. The father may deeply affect the 
 character and destiny of the child ; but his conditions cannot 
 be organized into it as are the conditions of the mother ; 
 because its organic existence is not begun and completed in 
 his organism, but in hers. The mother's power over the 
 constitutional and organic tendencies and predispositions of 
 the child must of necessity be all but absolute ; inasmuch as 
 under the action of the forces of her organism, the entire 
 process of organization is performed. 
 
 Much might be, ought to be, and will be said about the 
 power of the father over the character and destiny of his 
 child, and of the manner in which that power is brought to 
 bear on its organization, both before its conception, and 
 between its conception and birth. Especially will the treat- 
 ment of the mother by the father of her child during its 
 gestational development, and when all the energies of her 
 body and soul should be left perfectly free from all other 
 sources of exhaustion, to concentrate themselves on the just 
 and rightful performance of the mighty and momentous work 
 in which she is engaged — that of giving a healthy and 
 perfect organization to her child — become a subject of most 
 anxious thought and inquiry to every father, to every friend 
 of progress, and to every church and state, whose aim is the 
 elevation and happiness of man. But my subject is the 
 empire of the mother. 
 4 
 
82 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE HTJMAN ORGANISM — WHENCE ITS MATERIALS? 
 
 What power has the mother over the quality of the mate* 
 rials of which her child is composed, and over the manner in 
 which they are put together ? Has she any? If any, what? 
 I refer to the periods of gestation and lactation. As proof 
 that she has power over the matter and manner of its organi- 
 zation, I have adduced the fact, that the organic existence of 
 every child is begun and completed within the organism of 
 the mother. To this end, I would present another fact, i. e. : 
 
 Fact Second. — The Elements of which the Child is 
 
 FORMED COME DIRECTLY FROM THE MOTHER's BlOOD. 
 
 To the question — Whence the materials of which the child, 
 previous to birth, is composed? but one answer can be given 
 — tlie mother'' s hlood. From whatever source they may be 
 derived, originally, whether from Earth, Herschel, Saturn, or 
 some other planet, Y»^e know that the maternal blood is the 
 only direct channel through which all must come, which is 
 necessary to make'up the child's living organism, previous to 
 birth. From the moment in which the developmental process 
 begins, no other source is open to furnish materials for its 
 growth. It may be asked — Whence the materials to form 
 the maternal blood ? No matter how this may be answered ; 
 whether that be composed of elements derived from light, 
 heat, air, water, earth, vegetable or animal food, or from all 
 
THE ORGANISM WHENCE ITS 3IATERIALS ? 83 
 
 combined, from this or from some other planet, — the fact is 
 before us, clear and unmistakable, that the blood of the 
 mother is the only source of all direct nutrition during the 
 pre-natal life of the child ; till it assumes the form of a 
 human being complete in all its parts, and prepared for an 
 existence independent of the mother. 
 
 That this is true of the visible, or flesh and blood organ- 
 ism, no one will dispute. By a process of chemical analysis, 
 it is demonstrated to the physical senses that all the elements 
 that compose the human body are found in tlie blood of 
 woman ; and the means, by which they are conveyed to the 
 growing child, can be made manifest. So it can be known, 
 as any fact, made evident to the senses, can be known, that 
 all which goes to make up each and every part of the human 
 body, before birth, comes directly from this source. A per- 
 fect physical organism must have bones, muscles, sinews, 
 nerves, heart, brain, stomach, lungs, eyes, ears, &c. ; and all 
 these, though so different in their structure, use, and appear- 
 ance, must all be derived from one and the same source. 
 Therefore, all the elements necessary when properly selected 
 and put together, to make these different organs and parts of 
 a human organism, must exist in the blood of woman. 
 
 So far as the body is concerned, all this can be made cer- 
 tain by a demonstration which, like figures, cannot lie. The 
 eye, the brain, the heart, the stomach, and every other part 
 of the system can be analyzed, the component parts of each 
 separated and subjected to the inspection of the senses ; and 
 each separate part of these organs, and of the whole body, be 
 found in the maternal blood. So that no doubt can exist, 
 that all the materials that go to make up the yhysical organ- 
 ism before birth, must come directly from this source. 
 
 But the soul, or psychical organism: Is this a, substance? 
 Is it an organized structure ? If so (and I assume that it is), 
 
84 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 whence the materials of "vvhich it is composed? This is 
 formed of diiFerent and more subtle and refined materials 
 than the physical, which, when combined in a certain form 
 and manner, make a human soul, mind, or spirit (no matter 
 as to its name), which is capable of all the phenomena of 
 thought, feeling, will, reason, and all others which are mani- 
 festations of what we call soul. Whether this be a compound 
 of organized substances, or whether it be made up of one 
 element, or what may be its shape, or what the changes to 
 which it is liable ; these are questions not important to the 
 object at which I aim ; though my conviction is that the por- 
 tion of the living human organism which thinks, reasons, 
 feels, loves, contrives, aspires ; which sees, hears, tastes and 
 smells ; and which vitalizes every particle and portion of the 
 body, and is the motive power of the whole system, — is an 
 organized substance, or rather a compound of organized sub- 
 stances, having the exact form and appearance of a man or 
 woman, and that this psychical organism is the exact counter- 
 part of the physical ; or rather, the latter is the exact counter- 
 part of the former ; the physical exactly answering to the 
 psychical in every particular, being made by it, and for it ; 
 and in every particle of its structure being permeated and 
 vitalized by it, and its existence having no significance, except 
 as a medium formed by the spirit, or psychical organism, 
 and adapted to the manifestation of all its peculiar qualities. 
 Assuming, then, that the soul, or the thinking, feeling, 
 willing, vitalizing and motive power of the human organism 
 is an organized substance, or, a compound of organized sub- 
 stances ; that it is something and not nothing ; the same 
 question arises in regard to it that is asked in reference to 
 the body — Whence the elements or materials of which it is 
 formed? They must come from some source, and that 
 source must be within reach of and accessible to the plastic 
 
THE ORGANISM — WHENCE ITS MATERIALS? 85 
 
 or formmg power, whatever, or wherever that power may be. 
 If there be any soul or living power in the germ capable of 
 conscious thought, affection, memory, will and reason, it lies 
 beyond our ken. Whatever other power may be there, this 
 is not, so far as we can discover, any more than there is a 
 body, with brains, eyes, heart and lungs and stomach. 
 There is a something in the germ, which, under the fostering 
 care, and aided by the vitalizing, constructive power of the 
 maternal organism, is competent to gather up materials from 
 its surroundings, and so distribute, assimilate, combine and 
 unite them, as to present them, in due time, in the form of a 
 living, self-moving human being. This power to gather up 
 those materials and form them into a living child, is in the 
 germ ; but it could never perform this work only within the 
 living organism of woman ; and in direct contact with her 
 blood, and aided by the plastic power of her nature. If 
 there is, or ever was, any other place or organism, in which 
 a human germ could be developed into a human being, 
 except the organism of woman, thus far, human research has 
 failed to discover it. 
 
 The psychical organism must derive its materials from the 
 same source from whicli the body is derived. Woman's 
 blood is the immediate source from which come all human 
 souls as well as bodies. This psychical organism, or soul, 
 constitutes the vitalizing, thinking, loving and motive power 
 of the flesh and blood organism, its life-principle. The 
 physical body has material eyes and ears, but it is the 
 psychical organism that sees and hears ; the physical has 
 nerves, but it is the psychical that feels, smells and tastes ; 
 the body has legs, but it is the soul that walks ; and the 
 body has a tongue, but it is the soul that talks. So of all 
 the organs and functions of the physical organism ; they 
 would all be as wood and stone cut and carved into the like- 
 
86 THE EHIPtRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 ness of a man or woman, utterly destitute of life and motion, 
 and of thought and feeling, of will and memory, but for the 
 thinking, feeling, living, willing psychical organism within. 
 This vitalizes every organ and function of the physical 
 organism, and gives use and significance to them all. 
 
 The mother takes charge of the germ of a new life. No 
 organized structure is there ; only a simple cell, with a 
 something in it, capable, under the action of a power within 
 itself and in the mother, of being developed into a perfect 
 human being. "Within nine months that germ appears a 
 living, human body and soul ; the growth of the latter 
 having kept exact pace with that of the former. When the 
 eye and ear are perfected, the soul sees and hears ; when the 
 brain and nerves are perfected, the soul thinks and feels ; 
 when the legs and tongue are perfected, the soul walks and 
 talks ; the growth of the psychical corresponding with that 
 of the physical, and the manifestations of the former are 
 essentially controlled by the conditions of the latter. The 
 psychical organism, in all its parts and powers, must, like 
 the physical, be made complete before birth, or it never can 
 be perfected in this state. If the child is born without a 
 physical eye, ear, tongue, arm or leg, these can never be 
 added afterwards. So if any organ, faculty, or power of the 
 psychical organism be incomplete at birth, it must remain so 
 till the dissolution • of the body. Whether the inherited, 
 organic diseases and deformities of the psychical organism 
 can be and will be cured after that event, is a fearful question 
 to those who are to be the mothers and fathers of this world's 
 future, if the positions laid down in this work be true. 
 Human souls are cursed, before birth, with painful diseases 
 and horrible deformities. Who does it? The parents; 
 mainly the mother, aided by the father, acting through her. 
 Will those diseases of the soul ever be cured, if not before, 
 
THE ORGANISM — WHENCE ITS MATERIALS? 87 
 
 then after the dissolution of the body ? Mothers ! Fathers ! 
 Must your outraged, diseased, suiFering children stand for- 
 ever before you, as swift witnesses against your wilful igno- 
 rance, your cruel indifference, your ungoverned passion and 
 your inhuman selfishness? "Will you not all combine your 
 efforts to purify the fountain from which must issue all the 
 streams of human life that are to flow on and on forever? 
 Will you not, calmly and earnestly, consider the relation of 
 woman's organism to the destiny of the race, and then do 
 whatever may and can be done, to purify and perfect this 
 source, from which have come in the past, and must come in 
 the future, all the psychical, as well as physical human 
 organisms, all the souls as Avell as bodies, that are to fill and 
 crowd this portion of God's great kingdom, both in and out 
 of the body ? 
 
 For there is the same reason to conclude that the elements 
 of which souls are made, come from the blood of woman, as 
 well as those of which bodies are made. We have no appa- 
 ratus to analyze the psychical, as we have to analyze the 
 physical organism. We cannot subject the elements of which 
 souls are made to the scrutiny of the bodily senses. Yet, as 
 both organisms are developed by the action of the plastic or 
 forming power in the maternal organism, and amid the same 
 surroundings, there is the same reason to conclude that both 
 are derived from the same source ; that, as the physical eye 
 and ear are derived from the maternal blood, so the psychical 
 power to see and hear, comes from the same ; and as the 
 physical brain, nerves and heart, are derived from woman's 
 blood, the psychical power to think and feel, to reason and 
 to love, to will and to do, come from the same source. 
 
 Through the action of the mother's blood, life and sensa- 
 tion are communicated to every part, not only of her own 
 system, but also to that of her forming child. As, through 
 
88 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 the action of her blood her own organism is prepared to 
 see, hear, taste, smell, think and feel, and to live and move ; 
 so through the action of the same agent, her child's organi- 
 zation is perfected, and rendered capable of seeing, hearing, 
 thinking, feeling, living and acting. Not only are the physi- 
 cal instruments of thought and feeling, of seeing and hear- 
 ing, prepared by the action of her blood, but the organization 
 of the agent, or soul, that is to use those instrumentalities, is 
 perfected by the same process. 
 
 The conclusion is, that there are the same reasons for 
 believing that there must exist in woman's blood, elements of 
 which souls as well as bodies are made ; and that there is 
 power in the germ to gather up and put together those 
 materials into living human organisms, capable of all the 
 phenomenal manifestations usually seen and expected in a 
 human being. The conclusion seems rational and philo- 
 sophical, that human beings, with all their essential and 
 peculiar attributes and characteristics, derive their organic 
 existence directly from the blood of woman. Our physical, 
 intellectual, affectional, and passional predeterminations, come 
 to us, mainly, through the maternal organism ; and, as are its 
 conditions, so will be our organization, and, consequently, 
 our post-natal destiny. 
 
 The question may arise. Has woman the power to say of 
 what materials her blood shall be composed ? Who can doubt 
 it? It is to ask. Has woman any power over the quality and 
 quantity of her food ? That her blood is formed from what- 
 ever she takes into her system as nourishment, or as a grati- 
 fication of her appetite ; that it is characterized, and made 
 pure or impure, by the quality of what she takes ; that it 
 may be rendered more or less diseased by the quantity, as 
 well as by the quality of her food ; that her blood may be 
 made impure, and rendered unfit to supply healthful nutrition 
 
THE ORGANISM — WHENCE ITS MATERIALS? 89 
 
 to her embryo child, by an excess in quantity of even the 
 most healthful food ; that she has power to select from the 
 articles spread by God, so bountifully on his great table, 
 selecting that which, in her view, is best adapted to form 
 pure, and rejecting that which is most likely to form impure 
 blood ; that the quality of the air she breathes, and the water 
 and liquids she drinks, and the kind and amount of the 
 labor she performs, will materially affect the conditions of 
 her blood ; that she can, to a great extent, control the air 
 she breathes, the liquid) she drinks, and the labor she per- 
 forms ; that these, and many other things pertaining to her 
 physical life, that essentially affect the character of her blood, 
 are, to a greater or less extent, under her control, none can 
 doubt. If, then, she has power over her food, and over 
 whatever constitutes her nutrition, she has power to say of 
 what her blood shall be made. 
 
 Who shall instruct woman in two things? (1.) "What 
 materials are best adapted to form the most healthful, vigor- 
 ous and perfect organization for her child? (2.) What kinds 
 of nourishment are best adapted to supply her blood with 
 those materials ? The true woman would become a mother. 
 She would give to her child a healthful, vigorous and happy 
 organism, body and soul. She knows its organic existence 
 must be derived from her blood. Her natural and most 
 anxious inquiry will be, " How can I place my blood in the 
 best possible condition to furnish my child Avith materials 
 for the best possible organization? WTio will instruct me 
 how to make the fountain pure and perfect, from which the 
 organic existence, the character and destiny of my child are 
 to flow?" Who, by chemical analysis, will tell that anxious 
 woman what nutriment is adapted to furnish the best mate- 
 rials for the formation of the most healthful body? Can any 
 4* 
 
90 THE EMPIRE OP THE MOTHER. 
 
 one inform her what nutriment contains most of those ele- 
 ments that are required to form the most perfect soul ? 
 
 But these are questions for the future of the race in that 
 good time coming; when, in religion, in morals, in anthro- 
 pology, and in all efforts to elevate and perfect the nature we 
 bear. Fiction shall give place to Fact. In that future, I am 
 certain the question will be asked and answered — How can 
 the most healthful, beautiful and happy organic existence be 
 secured to each child as a birthright inheritance ? Then the 
 church, the state, the pulpit, the press and platform, and all 
 who would elevate and save the race, and secure to all a 
 noble character and a happy destiny, will turn their attention 
 to the Health of Woman. All will say — " Let us purify 
 and perfect her blood, the fountain of all organic life and of 
 character and destiny to man ; let us invigorate, beautify, 
 ennoble and perfect that organism in which all of human kind 
 receive their organic existence and direction, their tendencies 
 to physical disease or health and mental and moral aptitudes ; 
 let us cleanse and purify the fountain of organic life, and then 
 the streams that flow from it will be pure." 
 
 But, what of the present condition of that fountain of life, 
 character and destiny to man ? Who can think of it without 
 shrinking with horror from the ghastly diseases and crimes 
 that are to flow from it, and the wretchedness that must fol- 
 low in their train ? Where is the healthy woman ? Where 
 the mother that rejoices in the perfectly healthful organism of 
 her child ? The Blood of Woman ! It is filled with many 
 foul diseases. Of necessity, must not those human organisms 
 that derive their existence from such a source, be filled with 
 disease from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot? 
 What use in trying to heal these wounds and diseases, while 
 the fountain is left untouched? The fountain is full of 
 animal and vegetable putrefaction, all dark and turbid with 
 
THE ORGANISM — WHENCE ITS ]yL4.TEIlIALS ? 91 
 
 filth and corruption. Would we purify the stream? Go 
 then and remove the decaying animal and vegetable sub- 
 stances from the fountain ; cleanse it of all that corrupts and 
 pollutes its waters, and makes them poisonous and loath- 
 some ; and then clear and beautiful streams will issue from 
 it to gladden and bless all who approach and partake of them. 
 So let the world deal with the Blood of "Woman, — purify, 
 beautify and ennoble that, and then nought but cleanliness, 
 purity, beauty and nobleness can flow from it. 
 
92 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 INHERITED IVIATERNAL COITDITIONS. 
 
 Two facts have been stated and commented on, going to 
 show the power of the mother over the organization of the 
 chikl, i. e. : (1.) The organic existence of the child is begun 
 and completed within the organism of the mother. (2.) The 
 elements of which that organism is composed must come 
 from the mother's blood. These two facts cannot be dis- 
 puted. A third fact is no less certain, i. e. : 
 
 Fact Third. — The Materials of which the Child is 
 
 COMPOSED, MUST COME PROM THE MaTERNAL BlOOD, 
 STAMPED WITH ITS Coi^DITIONS. 
 
 The conditions of woman may be considered in two aspects. 
 (1.) Physical conditions. (2.) Psychical conditions, — or 
 conditions of the hody and conditions of the soid. That the 
 conditions of her entire physical organism are in accordance 
 with and indicated by the conditions of her blood, will not be 
 doubted. As is the state of her blood, so will be that of her 
 brain, her heart, her lungs, stomach, liver, and nervous sys- 
 tem ; of her eyes, ears, skin, and of every organ and function 
 of her body. Inasmuch as the entire physical structure is 
 nourished and sustained through the blood, and every waste 
 in the tissues and fibres is supplied from the same source ; 
 and that which supplies her own system with nourishment, 
 must supply the materials to form the organism of her embryo 
 
INHERITED MATERNAL CONDITIONS. 93 
 
 child ; consequently the impurities and diseases that are in 
 her blood must enter, not only into her own, but also into its 
 body. Her blood must furnish all the materials necessary to 
 form the brain, the lungs, the heart, eyes and ears of her 
 child ; and if those materials are defective and diseased, 
 before they are extracted from her blood, they must be so 
 after they are constructed into these different organs, and of 
 course the organs themselves will be defective, and unfitted 
 healthfully to perform the parts assigned to them in the 
 system. 
 
 A71 Autlienticated Fact. The following well-attested fact 
 is, in several respects, very illustrative, especially of the 
 power of the maternal blood over the physical conditions of 
 
 the child, before and after birth. A Mrs. gave birth 
 
 to twins. The physical organisms of the children were per- 
 fect and healthful in every part. Such were the conditions 
 of the mother that it was thought advisable to feed rather 
 than nurse them at the breast. Cows' milk was the only 
 nourishment given them. Though plump, and a^Tparently 
 healthy, their food afforded no nourishment. They would 
 eat voraciously, but they seemed to have no power to convert 
 their food into blood, and thence into bone, brain, and various 
 organs of the body. From the first they began to grow poor, 
 thin, craving and devouring the food, but deriving no means 
 of growth and strength from it. They became very ema- 
 ciated. At length the attending physician, though he could 
 discover no disease in them, gave them up, declaring that 
 they must die. A neighbor called in to see them, who had 
 given much thought to the subject of animal chemistry and 
 the phenomena of physical life. He saw that the children 
 were starving to death, and that they had no power to con- 
 vert their food into blood, and appropriate it to the purpose 
 of nutrition. On questioning the mother as to her habits of 
 
94 THE EMPIEE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 life in regard to diet, he found that she had, from early 
 girlhood, lived mainly on animal food. He inferred that the 
 trouble was in the food, and not in the children. He said 
 " the mother's blood was made of animal food, and, conse- 
 quently, the organisms of the children were composed of 
 materials derived from animal food ; and cows' milk, being 
 the product of vegetable food, was not suitable nourishment 
 for children whose physical existence is derived from animal 
 food." Accordingly he sent to the market, got a piece of 
 fresh, tender, lean beef, had some beef-tea made, and, in a 
 weak state at first, gave some to the famished little ones. 
 The very smell of it seemed to invigorate them. They lived 
 on it for weeks, having it made stronger and stronger, till 
 they were allowed to suck the fibre, and finally to swallow 
 it. They at once began to grow and strengthen, and in a 
 few months were hale and hearty. The physical conditions 
 of the mother were organized into her children, and they 
 needed food adapted to those conditions. Had they nursed 
 at the maternal breast, all had been well ; but, being fed on 
 a substance derived solely from vegetable food, there was not 
 power in them to convert it into nutrition for their peculiar 
 organisms. 
 
 Another Attested Fad^ going to show the same. A Mrs. 
 
 gave birth to a child, which she could not nurse, and 
 
 had to feed. The mother had taken meat and potatoes, and 
 other hearty vegetables, as a constant diet for years. She 
 fed her child on tapioca and rice, prepared with cows' milk. 
 It grew but little in size and weight, and seemed sickly, 
 weak, and unable to sustain life. After several months, the 
 mother was persuaded to change its diet, and feed it on 
 meat, potato, and other hearty vegetables. The child, at 
 once, began to show the effects of the change, and to become 
 strong and vigorous. Its nutrition was similar to that on 
 
INHERITED BIATERNAL CONDITIONS. 95 
 
 which its development depended before birth. It is a wise 
 arrangement, doubtless, and founded in true philosophy, that 
 the infant, sometime after it is born, is to derive its nourish- 
 ment from the maternal organism ; thus, in its tenderest and 
 most susceptible period of post-natal existence, deriving its 
 means of growth from the same source from which it derived 
 its nutrition for pre-natal development. Of what is the 
 maternal blood composed ? Learn this, and you know what 
 the child, whose organic existence is derived from it, needs 
 to supply its demands. After its birth, the child's body will 
 need to be nourished by substances similar to those on which 
 it was nourished before its birth. 
 
 If scrofula, cancer, consumption, or any disease exists in 
 the maternal blood, those diseases, or tendencies to them, 
 must, of necessity, be organized into the body of her child. 
 Within my knowledge, the mother of four children died of 
 consumption. Three of her children, daughters, died of the 
 same disease, at about the age of twenty. The fourth, a son, 
 yet lives, but shows, unmistakably, that he is soon to pass 
 within the veil, by the same disease. Who killed these chil- 
 dren? It is a mere convenient fiction, to screen parents from 
 responsibility, to charge their disease and corporeal death, 
 upon God. As well make God responsible for the atrocities 
 of slaveholders, who separate husbands and wives, parents 
 and children, brothers and sisters, who whip and scar the 
 backs of women, and who, as inhuman slave-traders, chattel- 
 ize and sell men, women and children. The God of Nature 
 is no more responsible for the inherited diseases of those 
 children, than for the blow of the midnight assassin, or the 
 slaughter of men on Bunker Hill, and at Sebastopol. Con- 
 sumption lurked in the maternal blood, and it was organized 
 into those children before they were born. 
 
96 THE ESIPIKE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 The following fact is within my knowledge. A mother of 
 a large family, whose organism was derived from maternal 
 ancestors in whose blood consumption lay concealed, and 
 which culminated in death, had her hopes blasted, and her 
 life deeply saddened, by the death of five of her children by 
 the fell destroyer. She had about the healthiest, most ener- 
 getic, and all-enduring womanly organism I ever heard of. 
 She lived over three score years and ten, and died without 
 any particular disease or pain. Tendency to consumption 
 may have been in her blood, but no outward symptoms bf it 
 ever appeared. How came her children to have it? They 
 may have inherited a tendency to it from her, but the true 
 cause was, the mother was overworked during their pre- 
 natal life, and the vital forces and energies that should have 
 been free to give vigor to their organizations, were directed 
 into other channels. The conditions of her blood were poor 
 and feeble, and this feebleness and impotency were organized 
 into them, and they were victimized to her misdirected ener- 
 gies. Her blood, exhausted by her incessant, wearing toil, 
 became inactive, and wholly unfit to impart vitality and 
 energy to her children. During that period, so replete with 
 destiny to the child, the maternal energies should be left 
 entirely free to impart vitality, power and activity, to its 
 organism. 
 
 The physical life and condition of every child, and of every 
 man and woman, is proof that the materials which go to form 
 the pre-natal organic existence of children, must be stamped 
 with the conditions of that maternal blood from which they 
 are derived. Woman ! think of this as you weaken, taint, 
 and pollute your blood withe foul narcotics, with nauseous 
 condiments and compounds, with putrid air, with diseased 
 food, with exhausting labors, and with wearying and unnatu- 
 ral, though exciting amusements and indulgences. Hearken ! 
 
INHERITED MATERNAL CONDITIONS. 97 
 
 the anguish and agonies, the wails and woes, of frightful dis- 
 eases and premature deaths to unborn millions fill the air 
 around you. If you would open your eyes, and unstop your 
 ears, you might see and hear them. Women of the Present 
 and to be the Mothers of the Puture ! listen to the agonizing 
 prayers that come up to you from the generations whose 
 organisms are to be derived from your blood, and for theii 
 sake, purify and keep pure this fountain of life to coming 
 ages. Let no indiscreet, extravagant and unnatural action of 
 yours pollute or enfeeble your blood, and through that mar 
 the beauty or harm the destiny of their physical natures. 
 
 But what of the Psychical Conditions of the 3Iother ? That 
 her bodily conditions are organized into her child, is a fact, 
 known and read of all, as a general law of reproduction. 
 How is it with her mental, social* and moral, or psychical 
 conditions ? Do these become the inheritance of the child by 
 a similar law ? Is her soul as well as her body, the immor- 
 tal as well as the mortal, the spirit as well as the flesh, the 
 thoughts and feelings as well as the cancers and scrofulas, 
 the psychical as well as the physical diseases and tendencies 
 of the mother, organized into her children ? This question is 
 more complicated and comprehensive than the other, and far 
 less easy of a satisfactory solution ; yet, facts in regard to it, 
 are as abundant and intelligible ; and, if we allow ourselves 
 to be guided by these facts, and trace results to antecedents in 
 this as in the physical phenomena of life, our conclusions 
 will be the same. 
 
 The conditions of the blood are, to a great extent, con- 
 trolled by the action of the soul. Certain actions of the 
 mind produce corresponding actions of the blood. The tem- 
 perature and motions of the blood are heightened and accel- 
 erated by the operations of the soul. The character of the 
 thoughts and feelings characterize the action of the blood. 
 
98 THE EHIPmE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 Woman's heart cannot healthfully perform its office, in 
 developing a life-germ into a human being, except as it is 
 filled and thrilled with love for the father of her child. God 
 has imposed on woman this injunction : never to become a 
 mother except under the auspices of a heart entirely per- 
 meated and controlled by a concentrated, exclusive, conjugal 
 love for the father of her child. Only such a love, absorbing, 
 filling and thrilling her entire being, can place her blood in a 
 condition adapted to prepare and furnish healthful materials, 
 rightly and happily to construct an organism, truly and nobly 
 to act its part on the theatre of eternity. The action and 
 movements of her blood must obey the pulsations of her 
 heart ; the pulsations of her heart must obey the action and 
 emotions of her soul. If her whole soul be vitalized, thrilled, 
 and ennobled by a concentrated, exclusive, conjugal love, that 
 seeketh not its own, and is all-trusting, all-hoping, all-endur- 
 ing, and filled with all the fulness of God, that will impart 
 health and perfection to the action of her heart, and this will 
 purify, vitalize and quicken the action of her blood ; that it 
 may furnish healthful materials to build up the organic struc- 
 ture of her child. Can woman's heart, throbbing with any 
 other emotion, impart such conditions to her blood as are 
 necessary to the formation of a healthful, happy child ? But 
 what must be the conditions of that woman's blood, whose 
 heart is cold and dead towards the father of her child, or is 
 excited by bitter antagonism, or anger, or aversion, and with 
 utter disgust towards the relation in which her child origi- 
 nated, or murderous opposition to its existence. God pity the 
 poor child whose organic existence is begun and completed 
 under the action of a heart thus controlled ! 
 
THE MOTHER AS A LAWGIVER. 99 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE MOTHER AS A LAWGIVER. 
 
 Is it true that human destiny daily and hourly depends on 
 organic conditions and constitutional tendencies ? 
 • And is it true that our organic and constitutional tenden- 
 cies of body and soul depend on maternal conditions ? 
 
 Behold, then, the empire of woman as a mother ! Who 
 shall attempt to estimate its power, its extent and duration? 
 Who shall attempt to calculate its bearing on the destiny of 
 the race, in the body and out of it ? What are earthly kings 
 and potentates ! They wear a bawble called a crown, and 
 wield a bawble called a sceptre ! They rule over states and 
 kingdoms of limited dimensions for a day or an hour. They 
 surround themselves with such splendor as money can buy, 
 and dazzle and bewilder their admirers, and exercise a brief, 
 little authority over them. But who heeds them? Who 
 cares for them? They die corporeally, and are forgotten, and 
 literally, the places and people that once knew them, know 
 them no more, as rulers. How soon their power is taken 
 from them ! 
 
 How terrible the end of one of the most gorgeous kingdoms 
 earth ever saw ! 
 
 " And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the 
 Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom 
 and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it 
 
100 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 be dwelt in from generation to generation. Not even the wild 
 Arab shall pitch his tent there ; nor shall shepherds make 
 their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall couch 
 down there ; and their palaces shall be full of doleful crea- 
 tures. Owls shall hoot there and satyrs dance there. And 
 the wild beasts of the islands shall howl in their desolate 
 houses, and dragons scream in their pleasant dwellings. 
 Lizards and snakes shall crawl over her ruined temples ! 
 Desolation and death shall hold their festival amid her ruins." 
 (Isa. xiii. 19-22.) To the kingdoms of the dead past, this 
 is literally applicable. Neither the model government nor 
 the model man is to be found in the sepulchres of the past. 
 It may in truth be said of all governments of the past, based 
 on military power, Avith all their array of kings and rulers, 
 — so pass the power and glory of earthly kingdoms and 
 earthly potentates. 
 
 But the mother's empire is like that of God's, while abso- 
 lute in power, it is eternal in duration ! While the human 
 soul exists, it must bear in its nature the imprint and linea- 
 ments of the mother. 
 
 Contemplate the power of the Mother as a Law- 
 giver ! We are under fixed laws of life and health to body 
 and soul. This is knowledge ; no room is left here for the 
 action of faith. In this we walk by sight, and not by faith. 
 Every plant, every tree, every animal beneath man, is under 
 fixed and just laws of life and health. All that has animal 
 or vegetable life, are brought into existence and carried 
 onward and upward, according to fixed laws. To all eter- 
 nity we shall be subject to them. Our destiny is fixed, so 
 far as immutable laws can fix it. 
 
 Where are these laws to be found? Where is the origi- 
 nal, infallible copy? Not in constitutions, codes and creeds, 
 
THE MOTHER AS A LAWGIVER. 101 
 
 the work of men's hands, but in the body and soul of each 
 man and woman. Each human being, at birth, brings with 
 him or her, as a birthright inheritance, a code of laws, 
 which, if he obeys, he will be all he is capable of being, and 
 just what he was designed to be, and no power in the universe 
 can make him evil or unhappy. But if he disobeys them, 
 no power can make him good and happy while his disobe- 
 dience continues. No salvation can come to us if we disobey 
 these laws ; no condemnation can come to us if we obey 
 them. Health and heaven must result from obedience ; dis- 
 ease and hell from disobedience. The penalty is as fixed 
 and certain as the law. 
 
 These laws' are organized into body and soul, as conditions 
 of life and health. These are the only laws that are ever 
 given to man, by his great Lawgiver. Each is, and ever 
 must be, a law unto himself. No man can be a fixed law 
 unto another. No man can ever make his own will a rule 
 for another. The eyes, ears, tongue, brains, lungs, heart, 
 stomach and blood of one man, can never be governed by 
 any external will or power. The functions of each human 
 organism must be governed by a power within itself. That 
 another eats and drinks, can never assuage my hunger and 
 thirst. That another is truthful, just, and good, can never 
 supply the lack of these qualities in me. 
 
 Who is the lawgiver ? Who organizes this code of wise 
 and just laws into our existence? Who legislates for us? 
 The Mother, in whose organism our organic existence is 
 begun and completed, and whose tender love, and anxious, 
 sleepless solicitude, preside over our pre-natal development. 
 She legislates not only for individuals, for a town, a state, 
 nation or kingdom, but also for the race. Her legislation is 
 uniform, and every human being must be subject to it. Will 
 the mother's power ever be appreciated by men and women ? 
 
102 THE EMPIRE OP THE MOTHER. 
 
 Yes ; when Fiction shall yield to Fact, and Anthropology- 
 become the only Theology. 
 
 The laws enacted by her are engi'aven, not on parchment, 
 nor on wood, nor stone, nor on plates of copper, silver or 
 gold, but on the more enduring substance of the human soul, 
 and also in the body through which that soul is to manifest 
 itself. The mother, as a legislator, organizes the laws of 
 life and salvation into our very existence, makes them essen- 
 tial parts of ourselves ; the fixed, unchanging elements of 
 our being. She inscribes them on every nerve, fibre, sinew, 
 tissue, vein, artery, and bone of the body, literally writing 
 them on the heart, stomach, lungs, brain, and every member 
 of the physical organism. Also, on the will, reason, con- 
 science, and every power or faculty of the psychical organ- 
 ism, or soul. She legislates for the interior as well as for 
 the exterior life. The thoughts and aiFections, and all the 
 unseen, unexpressed operations of the soul, as well as those 
 that are expressed and visible, are awakened and controlled 
 by laws of her enacting. Every element and faculty of our 
 bodies and souls, is absolutely and forever under laws of her 
 enacting ; and to each law is annexed the eternal, inexorable 
 fiat — " Obey axd live ; disobey and die." 
 
 These laws of the mother can never he altered, modified, 
 or repealed. They are, iu truth, the laws of God, and 
 changeless and enduring in all their operations and effects, 
 as the source from which they come. Laws, enacted by 
 states and kingdoms, must be changed or repealed ; but the 
 laws enacted by the mother are made essential elements of 
 our existence, and can never be repealed till the entire, 
 human organism, body and soul, is annihilated. 
 
 The governments of this world are arhitrary and capricious. 
 They cannot be otherwise. They are one thing to-day, 
 another to-morrow ; unstable as the wind or the tide ; nothing 
 
THE MOTHER AS A LAWGIVER. 103 
 
 is fixed or permanent about them. Indeed, the basis of all 
 laws, as enacted by legislators, states and kingdoms, is what 
 ignorant, short-sighted man determines to be present expe- 
 diency. According to their decisions, what is truth to-day, 
 may be enacted into a lie to-morrow ; what is theft, robbery 
 and murder, to-day, may be converted into righteousness to- 
 morrow. The licentiousness of to-day, may become the 
 perfection of moral purity to-morrow. "What is truth, justice, 
 mercy, benevolence, kindness, to-day, may be converted into 
 falsehood, injustice, cruelty, and unkindness, to-morrow. 
 Thus are all the enactments of human governments capri- 
 cious and changeable. They claim the power to annihilate 
 all distinction between good and evil. But the empire of 
 the mother is fixed as the throne of God. Her enactments 
 are for all time and eternity. What is law at one time or 
 place, is law in all times and places. In the code which she 
 gives to her child, as a birthright legacy, what is just in one 
 time and place, is just in all times and places. Her decrees 
 are fixed and unchangeable. Her legislation is for eternity. 
 What is just and right in the body, will be just and right out 
 of it. The laws of the soul, organized into it by the mother, 
 will never be repealed till the soul is annihilated. 
 
 There is no partiality in her enactmeyits. Her laws bear 
 on all alike. They ignore all disuoction of rich and poor, 
 learned and unlearned, reputable and disreputable, high and 
 low ; and they act on all impartially. Before her laws, all 
 are on a dead level. As a subject of law and penalty, she 
 recognizes the absolute equality of man, without regard to 
 color, country, or condition. The laws of civil government 
 are partial. They often act on different persons differently, 
 according as they are rich or poor, high or low, reputable or 
 disreputable. Their penalties are often visited upon criminals 
 according to their color, their wealth, their station, their social 
 
104 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 standing. But the laws enacted and engraven upon our 
 bodies and souls by the mother are just and impartial, and 
 their penalties visited on all alike, ignoring all adventitious 
 distinctions. Her legislation is for humanity ; and all that 
 are human by virtue of their existence as human beings, 
 must be subject to and alike affected by it. " Obey and live — 
 disobey and die," is the only alternative for all. I repeat, all 
 are equal, before her enactments. She, as a lawgiver, knows 
 no distinction between rich and poor, enslaved and enslaver, 
 black and white, titled and untitled, popular and unpopular. 
 
 The Empire of the 3Iother is Internal, that of Civil Govern' 
 ments is External. The kingdom of the mother is within us — 
 all other kingdoms are without. The affections, the thoughts, 
 the likes and dislikes, the desires, the passions, the disposi- 
 tions, the proclivities, the entire health and life of the soul is 
 under the jurisdiction of the mother, as well as the health and 
 life of the body. Civil governments can take cognizance only 
 of the outward, overt acts of the body. The interior life of 
 every human being is subject to her dominion. Victoria's 
 empire as a mother will grow and increase in extent and 
 duration, when her empire as a queen will be forgotten. 
 
 Is it said, the mother is not the real lawgiver, but only the 
 agent or medium through which the laws are given ? Granted 
 — but has not the mother power to alter or modify the laws 
 of God, as she inscribes them on the child ? She may, with 
 those divine laws, organize into her child, certain antagonistic, 
 temporary regulations, which may greatly impede the results 
 which the divine laws are adapted to work out. So that in 
 her child there may be two opposing forces or sets of laws ; 
 two conflicting powers or kingdoms. So that each may say, 
 " I find in my members a law, warring against the law of my 
 mind, leading me into captivity to sin. When I would do 
 good, evil is present." 
 
THE MOTHER AS A LAWGIVER. 105 
 
 God legislates for men through the mother, never through 
 congress or parliament ; nor through the church or state. 
 The laws, given through the mother, are more fitted to work 
 out our glory, than laws given through priests, politicians, 
 ecclesiastical councils, or political caucuses. Woman, as a 
 mother, is the law-making power of the great human king- 
 dom ; and the sole legitimate business of all agents, employed 
 to keep the peace, is to see to it that her laws are obeyed ; 
 for her laws are the laws of God. The sovereignty of the 
 race is vested in her. God has put into her hand the sceptre 
 of universal dominion. Over every tribe, state, nation, and 
 kingdom, her laws extend ; and all peoples, savage and civ- 
 ilized, barbarian and Christian, are under the jurisdiction of 
 the mother. Wherever there are souls to feel and think, to 
 suffer and enjoy, whether in or out of the body, there her 
 power is felt ; and her kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, 
 and her dominion limited only by human life. 
 
 Thus the mother organizes into the body and soul of her 
 child fixed laws or conditions of health and life. Sad it is, 
 that, at the same time she should, owing to her ignorance and 
 diseased conditions, organize into her child conditions of dis- 
 ease and death ; conditions which impel the child to disobe- 
 dience to these just and wholesome laws, and to a course of 
 non-compliance with those fixed conditions of health and life. 
 Love, justice, truth, forgiveness, forbearance, gentleness, are 
 made essential elements of existence in the soul of her child ; 
 at the same time, she organizes into it a propensity to hatred, 
 injustice, falsehood, revenge, and cruelty. Good for evil, is 
 the noblest, most essential condition of happiness to her 
 child's psychical existence ; yet, with this most essential and 
 absolute law of life, she organizes into it the base and bloody 
 law of retaliation ; an almost ungovernable tendency to evil 
 for evil. She is taught that her child is a child of God ; 
 
106 THE EJIPrRE OP THE MOTHER. 
 
 created in his likeness, and born in his image ; at the same 
 time, she is taught that her child, if she has one, must be 
 " conceived in sin, shapen in iniquity, prone to evil, and sent 
 away from its birth speaking lies." But, who conceives her 
 child in sin ? Who shaped it in iniquity ? Who gave it a 
 proneness to evil ? Who sent it away from the birth speaking 
 lies? These natural and simple questions, religions and 
 governments, and ministers in church and state have never 
 attempted to ask nor answer. But while woman, body and 
 soul, is so fearfully and fatally diseased, she must and will 
 organize her diseased as well as her healthful tendencies into 
 her children. She will organize love and hate, forgiveness and 
 revenge, justice and injustice, good and evil, health and dis- 
 ease, heaven and hell, into her child. But, liedlth is the law, 
 to body and soul ; disease the exception. Justice, love, 
 truth, good for evil, all that is included in the word of God, 
 is the permanent ; their opposites are the transient, and must 
 pass away. The God, in man, lives and reigns ; let the race 
 rejoice. Let all " Mope on^ and hope ever" 
 
THE MOTHER AS A TEACHER. 107 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE MOTHER AS A TEACHER. 
 
 She is our teacher, not only after we are born, but before ; 
 and the pre-natal lessons of the mother are much more 
 potent in their influence on our destiny, than her post-natal 
 instructions. 
 
 " What college had the honor of being your Alma 3Iater f " 
 was once asked me in Scotland. " The organism of my 
 mother," said I, " was my primary school, my academy, my 
 college, my university, and the only college from which I 
 ever graduated. The only diploma I ever had was signed 
 and sealed by my mother, as president of that educational 
 institution. That diploma empowered me to live, to think, 
 to feel, and act my part on the theatre of eternity." Alma 
 Mater ! Dear mother indeed to me ! The lessons inscribed 
 on my body and soul by thee can never be erased or forgot- 
 ten. The teachings of priests and politicians, of church and 
 state, of pulpits and platforms, of books and creeds, may be 
 forgotten ; but thy lessons, dear mother ! are imperishable as 
 the soul on which they are written. 
 
 The character of that college, and the lessons taught there, 
 are of more importance to the race, than are those of all other 
 colleges. As an educational institution or power, the maternal 
 organism is more important to mankind, than all educational 
 institutions that human power can set up. That institution 
 
108 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 over Tvhicli the mother presides, and whose instructions are 
 in her keeping, is the one great educational power of the 
 world. Before it, all others are but as dust in the balance ; a 
 drop in the ocean. It controls our hourly, daily and eterftal 
 destiny. The lessons of all other teachers may be erroneous, 
 and forgotten ; but her instructions, given in our pre-natal 
 life and education, are unerring, and can never be forgotten. 
 
 Would that the mother, as the gi-eat teacher of the race, 
 w^ere more perfectly prepared to give lessons of love, of wis- 
 dom, and eternal life to all of human kind. The ^jre-natal 
 Education of 3fan ! This will one day be regarded as the 
 most important subject to which Religions and Governments 
 can direct attention. In this work both parents must be the 
 teachers ; more especially the mother ; and no pains will be 
 spared to qualify them to give lessons of Love and Wisdom, 
 and not of Hate and Folly ; lessons that lead to God and 
 Heaven, and not that lead to degradation and misery. 
 
 What is done, what can be done, to qualify the mother to 
 be the teacher of truth, and only truth, to the race. It is of 
 moment that she be duly qualified to fill the station of a wise, 
 loving, unerring teacher. Where are the normal schools 
 at which woman may be instructed and qualified, as a mother, 
 to become the lawgiver and teacher of the race ? Are there 
 none in which woman may be taught her true relations to the 
 destiny of that race of beings, of which she is the mother? 
 Governments and churches found schools and colleges to 
 educate men and prepare them to be lawyers, doctors, priests, 
 statesmen, legislators, judges, and rulers ; but, what have they 
 done to found schools and colleges to educate women in the 
 divine^ the august science of Maternity ? Geology, chemistry, 
 botany, geography, geometry, theology ; these, and other 
 sciences, are sedulously taught by church and state ; but not 
 a school has church or state ever founded to teach woman 
 
THE MOTHER AS A TEACHER. 109 
 
 tliat science in which is wrapt up the destiny of individuals, 
 of states, nations, and kingdoms, and of the race, i. e., the 
 SCIENCE OF MATERNITY. Alas ! for the folly, the stupidity, 
 the insanity of that state or church that spares no labor or 
 expense, to educate men and women to teach a district school 
 (a most laudable object), or to legislate for, or rule over a 
 petty state or kingdom, but bestows not a thought, nor a dollar 
 to educate her for her diviae mission as a mother, who is the 
 teacher and legislator of the race, and whose lessons and legis- 
 lation take hold on eternity. What labor, what anxiety, what 
 self-denial are practised by fathers to educate their sons to fill 
 a professorship in some petty college ! But what is done by 
 those fathers to educate their daughters to be competent profes- 
 sors in that college from which must be graduated or come 
 forth, all the individuals, and the states and kingdoms of this 
 world's future ? Nothing ! alas ! Nothing ! 
 
 "Woman, as a mother, under God, is the author of that 
 constitution and code of laws by which the destiny of every 
 individual man and woman, and every church, state, nation 
 and kingdom, must be decided. Let her be taught how to 
 engrave that constitution and code on each human body and 
 soul, unmixed with organic diseases, and inherited tendencies, 
 appetites and passions, that must necessarily impede the true 
 and healthful action of those fixed and just laws. Let her 
 be so educated that she may impart to her child, in its pre- 
 natal life, the lessons that must lead it up to whatever of 
 beauty, purity, greatness and glory, it shall ever attain, with- 
 out intermingling with them lessons and tendencies that 
 necessarily lead to deformity, impurity and infamy. Now, 
 while the mother inscribes health on the body, as the law of 
 its being, she also organizes into that body tendencies to 
 various and painful diseases ; and while she inscribes on the 
 soul lessons of wisdom, love, justice, truth, forgiveness and 
 
110 THE EMPmE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 self-sacrifice, she also organizes into it tendencies to hatred, 
 injustice, falsehood, revenge and selfishness. Thus, mainly 
 through ignorance, the mother lays the foundation in her 
 child, of a life-long and desperate conflict with itself. Thus, 
 the child, in far distant periods of its existence, is victimized 
 to maternal ignorance, and in agony of spirit, is made to cry 
 out, " when I would do good, evil is present ! " 
 
 In the name of humanity, let woman be taught how to 
 furnish herself with the best possible materials, of which to 
 construct the human organism, the most delicate, compli- 
 cated and wonderful of all structures ; and then let her be 
 taught how to put those materials together, so as to form the 
 most perfect human being. Thus let her be qualified to be 
 to individuals, states and kingdoms, " the way, the truth, and 
 the life." 
 
 THE MOTHER A PRIEST. 
 
 Yes ; God's true, anointed, and ordained priest, to minister 
 at the great altar of humanity. From the hour in which she, 
 takes charge of the germ of a new life, she stands before the 
 present and the future of this world, and in presence of 
 eternity, with its unending years, and its ceaseless progres- 
 sion, arrayed in robes of light, as God's high priest to her 
 child. Truly, in presence of the unconscious immortal that 
 is being developed beneath her loving heart, she stands clothed 
 with light as with a garment. A crown of glory is on her 
 head, a diadem of beauty encircles her brow, and she awaits 
 the hour, the coronation hour, when she can place that crown 
 of glory upon the head of her child, and encircle its brow 
 with that diadem of beauty, and start it on a career of eternal 
 life and unending progression under happy auspices. 
 
THE MOTHER A PRIEST. Ill 
 
 No oracles of Apollo are so true, and so sure to come to pass. 
 No priest ever stood so near to God, and to the objects of his 
 ministrations as she does. No prayers are ever offered so 
 earnest, so deep, so agonizing, as those offered by the mother, 
 the great high priest of God, in behalf of the dear one that 
 is being developed beneath her loving, anxious heart. The 
 ever earnest call of her soul unto God is, that her babe may 
 be blest and filled with all the fulness of God. That her 
 child may be born with a healthy body and soul, adorned 
 with grace and beauty, and ever grow in favor wdth God and 
 man. Thus, with tenderest love and heroic fortitude, she 
 prepares herself for the august martyrdom of maternity ; 
 and proudly and joyfully lays her life on the altar of sacrifice, 
 with a " Gloria in Excelsis " in her heart and on her lips. 
 
 To her unborn babe she daily and hourly delivers oracles, 
 direct from the heart of God. She stands, as it were, in the 
 place of God, to her unborn babe. Men are educated by 
 the church, to fill the office of priest, and to administer at 
 what is called the altar of God, i. e., to baptize, to administer 
 sacraments, to pray, to preach, and act as go-betweens 
 between God and the people. Ecclesiastical councils license 
 and ordain these priests. All religions have their priests ; 
 but the mothers of the race are its true, God-ordained priest- 
 hood. God calls the mother to the office of the priest, to be 
 his minister, his High Priest to enter the very Holy of 
 Holies, where is the ark of the covenant ; and there, in his 
 name, to administer to the embryo man or woman, not by 
 reading and expounding what others have said and done, but 
 by organizing into its very being a code of fixed, unchanging 
 laws or conditions of life and health. She stands between 
 God and her unborn babe, to administer to it the image and 
 glory of God. 
 
112 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 CHAFTEK XII, 
 
 THE MOTHER AS A PROPHET. 
 
 "Who but the mother is competent to read the future of 
 earth's sons and daughters ? She sees their future of weal or 
 woe in her own experiences during their pre-natal life. No 
 need for her to consult the stars, to learn her child's destiny ; 
 let her consult her own conditions of body and soul, between 
 the conception and birth of her child. No need to look into 
 some divining glass, nor to consult the "flight of birds, nor 
 other mysterious omens and oracles ; let her look into the 
 mirror of her own internal experience. In that, as in a 
 divination glass presented to her by God, the Great Divinator, 
 she may see the future of her child, and foretell its destiny, as 
 surely as she can see effects in causes, in any department of 
 life. If certain conditions are present in the mother, corre- 
 sponding results must follow in the child. Like produces 
 like ; health produces health, disease, disease ; love produces 
 love, hatred, hatred. 
 
 Religion teaches that God, through Moses, David, Isaiah, 
 Paul, and other prophets, made known what was to be in the 
 distant future. But far niore surely does he make known 
 through the mother the future character and destiny of indi- 
 viduals and nations. For in maternal conditions hath God 
 written the future of the race. 
 
 In the highest sense is the mother the true prophet of God 
 to the race ; and the Divine origin of her commission cannot 
 
THE MOTHER AS A PROPHET. 113 
 
 be doubted. In her conditions is written the fate of kingdoms 
 and empires, as well as of individuals. In her experience 
 during the pre-natal life of man, the mother can speak to 
 coming ages, and, in the name of God, pronounce their doom 
 for weal or woe. 
 
 The throbbings of her heart are prophetic of the throbbings 
 of her child's heart, in the far distant future. In her own 
 thoughts, plans and purposes, she may see its thoughts, plans 
 and purposes, as it speeds on its pathway of immortality. 
 Her likes and dislikes, her loves and hatreds, her attractions 
 and repulsions, and her sympathies, are but a prophecy, sure 
 and unerring, of what will be the loves and hates, the attrac- 
 tions and repulsions, and sympathies of her child, when its 
 life shall be blended with the life of the Past in the spirit 
 state. In her vanity, her ambition, her selfishness, her irrita- 
 bility, her anger, her revenge, she may see and foretell the 
 doom of her child in regard to such manifestations. In short, 
 in her conditions and manifestations of her intellectual, social, 
 moral, affectional and passional nature, during the pre-natal 
 life of her child, she may read that child's intellectual, social, 
 moral, affectional and passional destiny, as it mingles with its 
 fellow-beings, and with them struggles onward and upward in 
 its career of eternal life. My mother ! My mother ! What 
 wast thou to me, as my organic e;s:istence was being perfected 
 under the pulsations of thy gentle, loving heart, and from 
 materials derived from thy blood, but a prophecy of my char- 
 acter and my destiny, both in and out of the body. Thy son 
 will ever bless and honor thee for the measure of health and 
 happiness, to body and soul, which thou didst mete out to him 
 as his birthright inheritance. During his sixty-five years of 
 experience in life, he has not been called to one week of 
 suffering that deserves the name. "What little of diseased 
 and inharmonious action of his physical organism he has 
 5* 
 
114 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 experienced, has been easily and speedily rectified by the 
 energetic, living, ever-present and ever-watchful Recuperator 
 or Redeemer thou didst organize into him. Thanksgiving to 
 thee, my loving mother ! and the voice of melody will ever 
 fill my heart for the life of almost uninterrupted health and 
 happiness thou didst organize into me. Under God, " thine 
 shall be the glory forever," for this great salvation, and for 
 the inestimable gift of an inborn Saviour so vigilant, and so 
 energetic to save. 
 
 The throbbings of the mother's heart are prophetic, not only 
 of the destiny of individuals, in their distant future, but also 
 of the character and destiny of states and kingdoms. As 
 are the individuals composing them, so are states and nations. 
 As shall be the individual men and women of the future, so 
 will be the states and nations of the future. The power that 
 determines the character and destiny of the individuals of 
 the future, must also determine the character and destiny 
 of the governments and nations of that future. The power 
 that holds in its keeping, the life and happiness of individuals, 
 holds in its keeping the life and prosperity of nations. 
 
 Where are the men and women of the future? As yet 
 they are not. Whence are they to come ? From the organ- 
 ism of woman, that fountain of organic life, from which all 
 the countless millions of human beings that are to people 
 this planet in the coming ages, are to derive their existence, 
 their vitality, and their innate proclivities. From the femi- 
 nine organisms of the present, are to proceed the men and 
 women who are to establish and administer the governmental 
 and ecclesiastical establishments of the future ; who are to 
 give existence and character to all the literary, commercial, 
 social, political and religious institutions that are to do their 
 part in moulding the domestic and social relations of coming 
 generations. And what is the condition of these organisms 
 
THE MOTHER AS A PROPHET. 115 
 
 in which is wrapt up the destiny of this world's future ? The 
 organism of woman ! That fountain of life, character and 
 destiny to the race ! AYhat is its present state ? In it are 
 all the elements of a healthy, noble, glorious life and destiny 
 to the individuals and nations of the future ; but how mixed 
 up with elements of every foul disease and suffering, ^and of 
 vice, discord, tyranny, and every crime. Deriving existence 
 from such a diseased fountain, what appalling scenes of 
 human wretchedness must be the doom of the world's future. 
 See that maternal heart under whose pulsations and aus- 
 pices the organic existence of Napoleon was begun and 
 completed. Every pulsation of that mother's heart, during 
 the pre-natal life of her child, was prophetic of the rise and 
 fall of kingdoms and empires ; the watchword of revolution. 
 Europe bowed to the pulsations of that maternal heart, and 
 confessed that her destiny for ages, hung upon its decisions. 
 The thoughts, feelings, hopes and aspirations of that mother's 
 soul gave tone and character to the pulsations of that mater- 
 nal heart. The throbbings of that heart controlled the con- 
 ditions of that maternal organism. The conditions of that 
 maternal organism controlled the physical, intellectual, social 
 and spiritual conditions of the child, and of the future Empe- 
 ror and warrior. That mother, in her own experiences during 
 the pre-natal life of her son, might have read the fate of 
 Europe in the far distant future, had she known how to 
 interpret them. 
 
 A Fact. — The following sad incident occurred in my 
 experience. I had lectured in a country town in New 
 England, on the pre-natal life and education of man. A 
 woman, a mother with her son of three years old, called 
 upon me. I was mucli interested in her boy, so perfect in 
 its physical organization. The child stepped out of the 
 
116 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 room, attracted by other children. To the mother, I said, 
 " What a healthy, noble boy you have. One of whom any 
 mother might well be proud." To my amazement, she, 
 bursting into tears, exclaimed, " I long and pray for his 
 death ! It would be an infinite relief to me to lay that form, 
 so healthy, strong and perfect, in the grave." " Your con- 
 duct," I replied, " seems most unnatural and monstrous." 
 " I know it must seem so to yoii, sir, still I long to see him 
 draw his last breath in childhood, for so surely as he lives, 
 he will become a murderer, and meet the murderer's doom 
 on the gallows." *' On what do you base your unmotherly, 
 unnatural prophecy?" I asked. "On my own conditions 
 before his birth," said she ; " from his conception to his birth, 
 I longed and labored for his death. I did all I could and 
 dared to do, to kill my child without killing myself. My 
 heart was filled with the spirit of murder against the life of 
 my child. He struggled into life against the spirit of murder 
 in the heart of his mother. That he was born a living child 
 was my deepest anguish, for, too truly, my spirit foreboded 
 what he must be, whose pre-natal life and education was 
 completed beneath a heart whose every throb was a threat 
 of death, and a protest against its existence." " But," I 
 asked, " does his post-natal life thus far correspond with your 
 conditions during his pre-natal life?" " Oh, too truly, too 
 fatally," said the weeping mother ; " I cannot awaken in him 
 the least sympathy and consideration for the persons of 
 others. He is utterly callous about inflicting wounds and 
 death on others. If his parents, or any body, offend him, he 
 strikes at their faces or persons, with whatever sharp or 
 deadly weapon he may happen to have, or that lies within 
 his reach. I dare not leave him alone with other children, 
 for fear he will kill them. God forgive me ! " cried the poor 
 mother, " I knew not Avhat I was doing ! I knew not that 
 
THE MOTHER AS A PROPHET. 117 
 
 my conditions were being stamped on my poor, unconscious, 
 unborn child ! " 
 
 See Christendom paying homage to the spirit and life of 
 Jesus ! That spirit and life were the natural results of the 
 conditions of that maternal organism in which his organic 
 existence was begun and completed. Had she known how to 
 read results in their antecedents, what a future for the race 
 might not the mother of Jesus have seen in her physical, 
 intellectual, social, and spiritual conditions, during his gesta- 
 tional life ! The pulsations of her heart had been to her 
 prophetic of the time when violence should cease, when the 
 nations of the earth should recognize her unborn child as 
 "King of kings, and Lord of lords," and "the kingdoms of 
 this world should become the kingdoms of our God ; " and 
 the " Lord God Omnipotent reign " over all the earth, through 
 his vice^rerent — the Mother. 
 
118 THE EMPniE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE :M0THER as a MESSIAH. 
 
 The work to be clone is, to elevate and perfect Human 
 Nature. This can be done only in one way, i. e., by curing 
 the human organism of its diseases, and bringing it into a 
 healthy state in all its functions. Health is Heaven, 
 Disease is Hell. Man will find no hell, except the hell 
 he carries in him. Wherever we go, if we carry hell, we 
 shall find it. How can hell be expelled from the human 
 organism? Expel disease, and the work is done. Bring 
 that organism into a state of healthy, harmonious action, in 
 all its relations, and man is saved from hell and raised to 
 heaven. Heal body and soul of their diseased and discordant 
 action, and the man is saved in the only sense in which he 
 can be. He is rescued from a hell-state, and placed in a 
 heaven-state. 
 
 We find what we carry. If we carry cancer, dys- 
 pepsia, neuralgia, consumption, or other physical diseases, we 
 shall find physical hell wherever we go. If we carry anger, 
 wrath, hate, revenge, jealousy, envy, suspicion, ambition, 
 or other psychical diseases, we shall find a i^sycJiical hell 
 wherever we go, whether in the body or out of it. And 
 this is the only salvation, i. e., to rescue the human being 
 from a diseased, or hell-state, and bring it into a healthy, or 
 heaven-state. 
 
THE MOTHER AS A MESSIAH. 119 
 
 On whom, above all others, has God imposed this work 
 of rescuing man from disease and suffering, and elevating 
 him to health and heaven ? Whom has God appointed to 
 this work of saving the race ? Whom has he sent on this 
 mission of redemption, this embassy of love and mercy to 
 the human family? The work to be done is simple and 
 easily comprehended, i. e., to cure the human organism of 
 its diseases. Who is the God-appointed physician to per- 
 form this cure, and thus to be the true Messiah and Saviour 
 of the race ? All nature answers, — the Mother. No being 
 can hold a relation to the human family so intimate and so 
 potential as she does. The three facts to which attention 
 has been called, cannot be true of any other being ; i. e. : — 
 
 1. The organic existence of every hiiman being 
 is begun and completed "vvithin the organism of the 
 
 MOTHER. 
 
 2. From her blood must come the materials of 
 which every human organism is 3iade. 
 
 3. Whatever disease lurks in her blood must be 
 organized into her child. 
 
 The destiny of the race is in the hands of the being of 
 whom these facts are true, and who is thus intimately related 
 to every child that is born. We know the entire work 
 of organization must be done under the direction of that 
 plastic power that God has placed in her for this purpose. 
 From conception to birth, such is the relation between the 
 mother and child that every pulsation of her heart, every 
 action of her intellect, and of her affections, sympathies, 
 passions and appetites, bear directly on the organic condi- 
 tions and constitutional tendencies, and, of course, on the 
 post-natal character and destiny of her child. Whose 
 power, for good or evil, can be so great as the mother's? 
 It is' not possible, in the nature of things, for man to wield 
 
120 THE EMPIRE OP THE MOTHER. 
 
 such power. To this, the facts just stated, touching the 
 relations of the mother to her child and her direct power 
 over it, fully attest. It is not possible for any created being 
 to hold relations with the human race so intimate and wield 
 a power so direct and extensive, as that which is held and 
 wielded by the mother. 
 
 In the history of man, every age and nation have thos6 who 
 are regarded as sent of God to heal and save. They are 
 called the Messiahs, the Saviours, or Redeemers of man- 
 kind. In all countries and religions are men who are regarded 
 as commissioned and sent of God to heal the human organ- 
 ism of its diseases, and restore it to health ; to expel hell 
 from it, and introduce heaven into it ; and men are educated, 
 set apart, licensed and ordained as priests and teachers, to 
 point the world to those reputed Messiahs and Saviours, to 
 save them from abnormal acts and their results ; or, in other 
 words, to restore healthy action to all our powers of body 
 and soul, in all the relations of life, and to make us the true, 
 loving, gentle, noble and happy men and women we were 
 designed to be, and are capable of being. These Messiahs 
 and the religions taught by them, are of use to mankind, and 
 worthy of regard only so far as they seek to expel, and do 
 expel, disease and hell from the human body and soul, and 
 bring into them health and heaven. None of these Redeem- 
 ers can possibly exert an influence so direct and potent, over 
 the character and destiny of man, as that which is exerted 
 by the mother. Not one of them can possibly enter into a 
 relation to the physical and psychical organization, the intel- 
 lectual, social, sympathetic and passional nature of man, so 
 intimate, so direct, so endearing, and so enduring, as that 
 which every mother holds to her child. 
 
 Though model characters of the past, — as the incarnations 
 of love, justice, truth, self-abnegation and good for evil, and 
 
THE MOTHER AS A MESSIAH. 121 
 
 of fidelity to their own convictions, and unfaltering loyalty to 
 their own higher nature ; though their sj^irit, if imbibed, and 
 their teachings, if followed, might beautify and ennoble, yet 
 nothing which they have said or done can possibly bear so 
 directly on our interior and exterior life, and on our destiny, 
 as the spirit and teachings and conditions of the mother. No 
 man can be a Saviour, to save us from transgression and its 
 consequences, and form and train us to cease to do evil, and 
 learn us to do well ; no man can be commissioned and sent 
 of God, to set up the kingdom of heaven in the human 
 organism, and inaugurate the reign of " peace on earth and 
 good will among men," as the mother can be and is ; because 
 no man can hold a relation to mankind so direct, so absolute 
 and vitalizing as she must, nor hold in his keeping the char- 
 acter and destiny of the race, in the sense that she does. 
 The mother is to her child, in a sense in which no man can 
 be, " the way, the truth, and the life." As a general rule, the 
 same tendencies must be in the child that are in the mother. 
 As a birthright inheritance, the child must put on the mother, 
 and be clothed with her spirit and conditions of body and 
 soul, more entirely than any other being. The mother, body 
 and soul, must be born into the child, and become a part of 
 its nature, and the governing power of its destiny, in the 
 body and out of it, in a sense in which no other recognized 
 Saviour of the dead past, or of the living present, can pos- 
 sibly be. 
 
 "We know that health and heaven, or salvation, must result 
 from the operation of the fixed laws of life and health, under- 
 stood and obeyed. Who is chosen and commissioned of God 
 to inscribe these laws on human bodies and souls ? Not man, 
 but woman ; not the father, but the mother. The mother 
 is commissioned, not only to enact, but also to expound 
 and enforce them. Millions of men are trained to go forth 
 
122 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 and point the world to those who have been received as God- 
 anointed and God-inspired teachers and Messiahs of the past, 
 to learn what these laws are, and find motives to obey them. 
 But what has been done by churches, or states and nations, 
 to teach woman how most perfectly to organize into each 
 child the kingdom of heaven as a birthright legacy, and thus 
 to become true saviours ? No pains are spared to teach the 
 young daughters of the race those things which may give 
 them a transient popularity and standing in society ; but what 
 is done to fit them for the one grand and holy mission of 
 their existence, i. e., as mothers, to organize into those whose 
 existence and destiny are to be derived from their organisms, 
 love, justice, truth, purity and heaven ; in a word, health of 
 body and soul, and thus to be the true saviours of human 
 beings — to save them from wrong-doing and its sad results, 
 by enthroning a God of love and justice over the soul of 
 each child, as its only redeeming and governing power during 
 its eternal existence? 
 
 The Gospel op Generation — The Gospel op Re- 
 generation. — Which is the Gospel of God to save the 
 human race from disease and sufiering, and give to it health 
 and happiness? The Gospel of Generation proposes to 
 to save the world, and establish on earth the reign of Justice, 
 Freedom, and Fraternity, by having the human organism 
 constructed of sound materials, and by having these healthy 
 materials harmoniously put together in the pre-natal state. 
 The Gospel of Regeneration proposes to accomplish the 
 same end by ignoring Generation as a means of salvation, 
 and pointing to Repentance and Reformation as the only 
 hope of the world ; the Gospel of Generation proposes to 
 save the world by having all human beings conceived in love 
 and purity, shapen in the likeness of God, prone to good, 
 
THE MOTHER AS A MESSIAH. 123 
 
 and sent away from the birth speaking truth ; the Gospel of 
 Regeneration proposes to reach the same result by Repent- 
 ance, after they have been " conceived in sin, shapen in 
 iniquity, prone to evil, and sent away from the birth speak- 
 ing lies." The Gospel of Generation would prevent men 
 from becoming criminals ; the Gospel of Regeneration aims 
 to reform or punish them after crime is organized into them. 
 The former seeks to save by preventing the weeds and tares 
 from getting into the field ; the latter aims to save by trying 
 to dig and root them out after their seeds are sown, and they 
 have taken deep root. The one would save from burning, 
 by keeping human beings out of the fire ; the other would 
 accomplish the same end, by snatching them from the flames 
 after they have been cast into the fire, and have been scorched 
 and nearly consumed by the devouring element. 
 
 The mother is sent of God to save the world by organ- 
 izing the kingdom of heaven into tlie child before it is 
 born ; and then, after it is born, with the assistance of 
 the father, and other teachers and Messiahs, to develop and 
 perfect that kingdom, and make it the only governing power. 
 The mother is not only designed to be a Saviour herself, but, 
 as such, she is set apart by God to see to it that a true and 
 efficient Saviour, all-competent to save from disease of body 
 and soul, is organized into each child, and made an essential 
 element of its existence. Her mission to her unborn child 
 is, to see to it, that, when her child is born, a Saviour is 
 horn luitli it and in it. Her great mission is, to publish to 
 all of human kind " glad tidings of great joy," through a 
 healthy and happy organization ; the mission of all other 
 Messiahs has been to publish the same, through Repentance 
 and Reformation ! The mother, as a Saviom', introduces 
 the child into the kingdom of God, at the first and natural 
 birth ; other Saviours labor to do the same thing by a 
 
124 THE EIVIPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 second and supernatural birth. Which is the wisest, most 
 expedient, and attended with the least risk and suffering, to 
 start a human being right at first, and then, by wise and 
 loving teachings, to keep him right ; or to start him wrong, 
 by organizing into him tendencies to wrong, and then, after 
 he is cursed with an all but ungovernable propensity to in- 
 temperance, to tyranny, to man-stealing, to prostitution, to 
 injustice, theft, robbery, and murder, and after he has run a 
 course of vice and crime till the heart is callous, reason is 
 darkened, and the voice of conscience hushed, to try to get 
 him right ? Better to start the child right and keep it right, 
 than to start it wrong, and then labor to get it right. Better 
 to "beat swords into plough-shares and spears into pruning- 
 hooks," and to teach the world to learn war no more, by 
 organizing into the human soul Love, Forgiveness, and Good 
 for Evil ; than to seek the same end, by organizing into it 
 Hatred, Revenge, and Evil for Evil, and then by Peniten- 
 tiaries and Gallows to try and keep men from acting out 
 these innate propensities to violence and blood. Far, far 
 better to save from drunkenness by organizing into the 
 human soul a taste for pure water, and nothing else, as a 
 beverage, than to organize into it the drunkard's appetite, — 
 a longing for alcoholic, narcotic, and exciting drinks, — and 
 then to try to eradicate that appetite, after it has its poor, 
 besotted victim in its deadly grasp. It is wiser, more natural, 
 more kind, and more certain of success, to guide a soul to 
 heaven by starting it in that direction at the outset of its 
 long and endless journey, than to start it in an opposite direc- 
 tion, and then pray, and preach, and labor to stop it in its 
 hell-bound career, and get it to turn about and struggle 
 against fierce and debasing propensities, to reach that heaven- 
 state designed by God to be its birthright inheritance. 
 
 Thus, the Gospel of Generation, is the Gospel of Nature 
 
^ THE MOTHER AS A MESSIAH. 125 
 
 and of Nature's God ; and tlip mother, owing to the peculiar 
 and most intimate relation which she holds to the pre-natal 
 life and organization of every human being, is designed to 
 be, and can be, the natural Saviour of the race. " God is 
 Love, and he that dwelleth in Love, dwelleth in God, and 
 God in him." A more sublime and comprehensive expres- 
 sion was never uttered. No truth, ever spoken in words, is 
 more vital to the redemption of mankind. To the mother 
 belongs the prerogative and the most august of all missions, 
 of conferring on every human being, as a birthright inherit- 
 ance, such a nature as will enable him from the outset of 
 life, and during all his course of eternal progression, to 
 embody and actualize, in his own person, the truth, that " to 
 dwell in Love is to dwell in God." Such a nature — which 
 will turn and be attracted to Love and to God, as naturally 
 and necessarily as the needle turns to the Pole — has every 
 child a right to demand of its mother ; and the mother, who, 
 for any cause, refuses to organize into her child this salva- 
 tion, this divine nature, and thus to enstamp upon its soul 
 the pure, unsullied image of God, does it a grievous wrong. 
 
 It will be asked. How are those to be saved who " are 
 conceived in sin, shapen in iniquity, prone to evil, and who 
 go away from the birth speaking lies ? " All such must be 
 born again. To them the Gospel of Regeneration is the only 
 " glad tidings of great joy." Repentance, Reformation, or 
 Regeneration, is the only door by which they can enter the 
 kingdom of heaven ; yet it had been better for them, — had 
 saved them from much suffering, from bitter self-reproach, 
 and shame and anguish, — had they entered the kingdom of 
 God through the door of Generation, with a gentle, loving, 
 tender mother to crown them with glory at their birth, and 
 to fit them out with healthy, vigorous and perfect bodies and 
 souls to enable them to meet bravely and triumphantly what- 
 ever obstacles may lie in their pathway of eternal life. 
 
126 THE EJIPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE TKIUMPH OF REASON AND CONSCIENCE. 
 
 Man is not made to be governed by instinct, passion, or 
 appetite. These should ever be nnder the control of reason 
 and conscience. This should ever be the case with parent- 
 age, and the relation that leads to it. Neither man nor 
 woman has a right to inflict pain and suffering on others, 
 especially on their children, for their own gratification. Off- 
 spring is a demand of Human Nature. But if the physical 
 and psychical conditions of the husband and wife — or of 
 either of them — be such that this demand of their nature 
 cannot be met without inflicting great wrong and suffering 
 on their child, what ought they to do ? Sacrifice themselves 
 by foregoing the fulfilment of that demand, or satisfy this 
 demand at the expense of their children ? If a wife cannot 
 become a mother without entailing on her child a frightful 
 legacy of pain and anguish, is it right for her to give exist- 
 ence to a child? Should not the maternal instinct in this 
 case be controlled by reason and conscience ? If so, what is 
 their decision ? 
 
 I would commend the following letter to the attentive 
 perusal of every conscientious man and woman who would 
 bring their entire nature under the government of that God 
 who pleads for justice and right in their own souls, and to 
 whom they pray — " Thy kingdom come ; Thy will be done 
 
TRIUMPH OF REASON AND CONSCIENCE. 127 
 
 on earth as it is in heaven." The letter deserves earnest 
 consideration. It is impossible not to respect the earnest and 
 conscientious writer. 
 
 " Henry C. Wright : My Friend, — I have lately been 
 reading your works, entitled ' Marriage and Parentage,' and 
 ' The Unwelcome Child ; ' and the tone of those works has 
 led me to write you an account of my own experiences; 
 more particularly, as the stand which I have taken has been 
 in a great measure caused by the principles therein advanced. 
 I ask not pardon for the liberty ; you will not require it. 
 The experience of any woman, so far as her maternal instincts 
 are concerned, must be of interest to you ; inasmuch as it is 
 upon known facts that all correct and valuable conclusions 
 must rest ; and any fact must be of service to you. In relat- 
 ing my experience, I shall not feel called upon to fetter 
 myself by any conventional proprieties as they are termed, 
 and in stepping into the broad field which lies beyond mere 
 conventionalisms, I feel that I shall have the approval of 
 every honest and candid spirit, that views these things from 
 their only true stand-point — their hearing upon the iveal or 
 woe of millions yet unhorn. 
 
 " I am a wife in the truest sense of the word. God him- 
 self has signified to me that such is the case. I have what 
 makes me truly a wife in the sight of God — a consciousness 
 that I love as a wife. This consciousness, ' signed, sealed and 
 delivered ' by God himself, is the unmistakable evidence that 
 I am a wife. I love my husband, and that love constitutes 
 me a wife. This consciousness of loving is a renewing of my 
 whole nature. Were it not so, it would not be true conjugal 
 love. True, conjugal love, never yet failed to bring a soul 
 into the kingdom of God. It must bless its subject and its 
 object. It cannot injure the peace of that soul which is 
 
128 THE EMPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 regenerated by it. Thus a great want in my womanly nature 
 is met. The deep, ever-present love of a wife lifts my soul 
 to God and His Kingdom. It asks for its reward only its 
 existence in my soul. There it rests to bless and to ennoble, 
 wholly independent of any one outside of myself. Thus my 
 womanly nature, in at least one of its elements, is born again, 
 and saved from .the desolation which must ever exist in the 
 heart of that woman who is unregenerated by the love of a 
 wife. 
 
 '' But there is another element stern and mighty in the 
 nature of every true woman ; more particularly of one born 
 into the kingdom of conjugal love, i. e., the desire to be 
 A mother. The love. of a wife constitutes a wife, but the 
 desire to be a mother does not constitute a mother ; and as 
 wc never can know of the love of a wife, until it is called into 
 existence by a husband, so we can never know the height, 
 depth and breadth, of the love of a mother, until it is called 
 into conscious existence by a child. As the failure to recipro- 
 cate the love of a wife on the part of the husband does not 
 affect her love as a wife, so the failure of a child who might 
 be so unnatural as to fail to reciprocate its mother's love, does 
 not effect a change in that love. But once let that love as a 
 mother be called into existence by a child, and that love will 
 always remain in the soul of that mother, to lead her onward 
 and upward. As I have felt the sacred influences of the 
 love of a wife, and through it, been made to see ; so do I now 
 most earnestly call for the consciousness of a mother's love. 
 
 " But why cannot I be a mother? You ask, ' Does not thy 
 husband respond to this call of thy nature ? ' Yes ; he 
 desires to be the father of my child. He would meet this 
 great want of my being and crown me with this great blessing. 
 But still the precious boon is denied me. Why? Because I 
 
 cannot, I DARE NOT, CURSE MY CHILD WITH MY PHYSICAL 
 
TRIUMPH OF REASON AND CONSCIENCE. 129 
 
 DISEASES. Because justice forbids me to call into being a 
 sickly, diseased child. And yet I am healthier than most 
 women. People look upon me and say, ' What a strong, 
 healthy body you have.' But underneath my present out- 
 ward health lurks the scourge — scrofula. My childhood was, 
 for the most part of it, spent in a body covered with scrofu- 
 lous sores, affecting my eyesight, causing me to be laid upon 
 the bed of suffering for months, and spending hours which 
 ought to have been spent in God's sunlight, within the walls 
 of a darkened room ; and though, with the help of a strong 
 constitution, its ravages have been partially checked, still, 
 now, it frequently gives tokens of its presence by painful 
 abscesses, which take me down in all my seeming health 
 and strength. Can I give this to my child ? Would not the 
 suffering of my child be an ever-present condemnation to 
 me? Think of a helpless child, at first dependent on the 
 blood of its mother for sustenance, and obtaining its life 
 therefrom, during its pre-natal development. Think of the 
 helpless germ of a human being, with no power to choose its 
 place of development, deposited where it can draw nothing 
 but disease and destruction to its physical nature. Think of 
 the child after it is born, trustingly drawing its sustenance 
 from the breast of its mother, and at every breath, drawing 
 sickness and death therefrom. Though I long to press my 
 child to my bosom, to feel that its life depends on the nour- 
 ishment it receives there, can I do so knowing that that 
 nourishment is full of scrofula and will curse my child ! 
 
 "My friend! Pity me you must, for surely I need pity. 
 It is not my fault that I am called upon to take up this cross. 
 My parents, (God forgive them,) without regard for my 
 welfare, brought me into being. Both of them uniting to fill 
 my body with disease. The germ was diseased, and placed in a 
 diseased organism, there to be developed into a body, which 
 6 
 
130 THE EMPIRE OP THE MOTHER. 
 
 became the habitation of a human soul. And this diseased 
 habitation was my birthright inheritance. Hard it would be, 
 even if my parents gave me an existence because they 
 wanted me. But they did not. I was the youngest of a 
 large family of children, not two years between any two of 
 them, and I was not wanted, but taken as an unavoidable 
 result, and loved, I doubt not, but I did not have such a 
 welcome into existence as is the birthright of every child. 
 
 " With these wrongs I have struggled all my lifetime. 
 How many traits of character, how much peevishness and 
 fretfulness have been fostered in me, which physical 
 suffering alone placed there ! But the great struggle, the 
 great battle of life, has come upon me now. Physical 
 suffering I can bear. I had rather bear it than to see my 
 child enduring it. But this desii-e to be a mother ! Never 
 has any thing taken such a complete possession of my whole 
 soul. It is ever present in all my daily life. A child, soul 
 of my soul, life of my life, given to me to develop ! The 
 temptation is sometimes stronger than I can resist by my 
 natural powers of conscience. A stronger heart than mine 
 points out the way, and says, ' He that taketh not his cross 
 is not worthy of me.' I should indeed be unworthy the 
 name of wife and mother, if I persisted in meeting this deep 
 want of my being by giving birth to a scrofulous and diseased 
 child. This is the greatest wrong of all which my parents 
 did to me ; giving me such an organism as to make this 
 great struggle between affection and duty an ever-present 
 element of my whole life. I never shall be able to quench 
 the desire ; and I should fail to be a woman if I did. Thus 
 the future looms up before me ; a wife but not a mother ; 
 an intense longing for a child to speak in loving tones, 
 the word * Mother ; ' but, alas ! no such word, from such 
 lips, can ever greet my ear, unless I wilfully trample upon 
 my sense of justice and right. 
 
 PB-^^-n 
 
TRIUMPH OF REASON AND CONSCIENCE. 131 
 
 ** But, thank God ! I can endure this trial. I can be true to the 
 voice of God in my own soul, but I cannot, I will not trample 
 upon the heaven-born rights of my child. No such terrible 
 alternative which presents itself to me, shall ever be presented 
 to a child of mine. No suffering, feeble infant of mine shall 
 wail out the wrong I have done it, with its cries of pain and 
 suffering ; but, instead, a voice which spoke ages ago, and 
 which is still ready to speak in every human soul that is true 
 to its warnings, speaks to me the same precious words which 
 greeted one of old, ' This is my beloved child, in whom I am 
 •well pleased.' And as I mount the cross which my parents 
 in their ignorance reared for me, God grant that this prayer 
 to heaven may come out from the depths of my soul, ' Father, 
 forgive them, for they knew not what they did/ 
 
 " And now, my friend ! I appeal to you. Which is the w\iy 
 for me? There are three open before me. One is to be the 
 mother of a diseased child. Another is to live with my 
 husband, in all the horrors of a licensed prostitution, — thus 
 desecrating the highest and holiest function of conjugal love 
 to the lowest of purposes. The other is to be true to my sense 
 of justice, and keep my desire to be a mother, in entire sub- 
 jection to conscience and reason, and never yield to it, until I 
 can honestly do so with the assured hope that the organic 
 existence of my child can be begun and completed amid holy 
 influences and healthy surroundings ; blessed with a deep 
 love-nature, and a perfectly healthy body, in which its soul 
 can develop for its eternal existence. Under no other condi- 
 tions can I become a mother ; and as the wrong done to me, 
 by my parents, positively forbids all hope of such conditions, 
 I can never enter into that relation. Priests profess to have 
 power to give me a license so to do ; but a voice stronger 
 than thousands of priests thunders its warnings into my soul, 
 if I do. 
 ^ " Can it be right for a woman wilfully and knowingly to 
 
132 THE ESIPIRE OF THE MOTHER. 
 
 transmit to a child, diseases which have been the bane of her 
 life? Can it be right for a man to insist upon a woman's so 
 doing ? 
 
 " Is it right for a woman whose blood is filled with disease 
 to live with a man as her husband, knowing that she is to be 
 compelled to give birth to sickly and suffering children? 
 
 " Which course will result in the most happiness, the one 
 that fights against, and refuses to gratify ^e deep, parental 
 instincts of her nature, and deems the law of conscience 
 stronger than the law of maternity ; or the one that lays her 
 sense of justice and right upon the altar of desire, however 
 pure and holy it may be ? 
 
 " Let the experience which I have written you tell how I 
 have answered these questions. Am I right or wrong? •' 
 
 " The blood of woman ! What a fearful state it is in ? "What 
 can cleanse and purify it, and render it fit to develop and 
 perfect the human organism ? What salvation is there for 
 that woman, who, fighting the terrible battle between duty 
 and desire, yields to the latter, and brings forth a living mon- 
 ument to her sin and wrong ! Or what salvation is there for 
 her who, being true to conscience, fails to obey that command 
 of God to every woman — ' be a mother,' and in the loneliness 
 and agony of her afflicted heart, she cries out, ' My God, my 
 God, why hast thou forsaken me ! ' A w^ife, but not a mother ! 
 A mother, but such only of a sickly and diseased child ! 
 Such must be the condition of the masses of our women. 
 What power shall lead them to a thorough regeneration, and 
 make them what God designed they should be — healthy 
 mothers of healthy children ! Can you tell the way ? Can you 
 point out the balm and the physician that can purify and 
 cleanse the blood of woman, and by that means save the 
 world from the hell of disease, to body and soul, into which 
 it is sinking?" 
 
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