en written on this subject which a later study of
biology and eugenics have shown to be utterly false. Let us consider the
actual facts. The baby is already a baby, floating in a fluid of its own
manufacture. It has absolutely no connection with its mother except by
means of its umbilical cord,--which is composed of blood vessels. The blood
in these vessels is the child's blood and never at any time does it even
mix with the blood of the mother. It is sent along these vessels into the
placenta, or after-birth, in which it circulates in small thin vessels, so
close to the mother's blood that their contents can be interchanged. Yet
the two streams never actually mix. The carbonic acid and waste products,
in the child's blood, are taken up by the mother's blood, and given in
exchange oxygen and food, which is returned to nourish the child. There is
absolutely no nervous connection between the mother and the child. How then
is it possible for the mother to affect her child in any way except insofar
as the quality of its nourishment is concerned? Nor can a mother affect her
child in any other sense. If the intermingling of blood could affect a
child's education we would frequently resort to surgery. In the article on
Eugenics, under the heading, "Education and Eugenics," it is explained that
the child is "created" at the moment of conception; that absolutely nothing
can affect it after it is created; that no influence of the mother or
father can in any way affect it for better or worse. A mother cannot create
in her child any quality which she may desire no matter how she conducts
herself. It was formerly thought that a mother could for example create a
musical genius by devoting all her time to the study of music while she
carried the unborn child; or that she could make a historian of it if she
studied history; or an artist if she studied paintings. We now know this to
be wholly wrong and for very excellent reasons.

The mother must realize that the only aid she can bestow upon her unborn
child is to give it the best possible nourishment. She must provide good
blood because the quality of the maternal blood stream bespeaks a healthy
or unhealthy, a fit or unfit, child. Whatever the child is to be is [129]
already fixed, its innate characteristics art part of itself. Whether it
will have the vitality to develop its inherent possibilities depends, to a
great degree, upon its intra-uterine environment,--and its intra-uterine