ow the mother
alone? To an infant the mother is the whole universe. Yet the child
needs more than the mother. It needs as well the presence of men, the
vibration from the present body of the man. There may not be any
actual, palpable connection. But from the great voluntary center in
the man pass unknowable communications and unreliable nourishment of
the stream of manly blood, rays which we cannot see, and which so far
we have refused to know, but none the less essential, quickening dark
rays which pass from the great dark abdominal life-center in the
father to the corresponding center in the child. And these rays, these
vibrations, are not like the mother-vibrations. Far, far from it. They
do not need the actual contact, the handling and the caressing. On the
contrary, the true male instinct is to avoid physical contact with a
baby. It may not need even actual presence. But present or absent,
there should be between the baby and the father that strange,
intangible communication, that strange pull and circuit such as the
magnetic pole exercises upon a needle, a vitalistic pull and flow
which lays all the life-plasm of the baby into the line of vital
quickening, strength, knowing. And any lack of this vital circuit,
this vital interchange between father and child, man and child, means
an inevitable impoverishment to the infant.

The child exists in the interplay of two great life-waves, the womanly
and the male. In appearance, the mother is everything. In truth, the
father has actively very little part. It does not matter much if he
hardly sees his child. Yet see it he should, sometimes, and touch it
sometimes, and renew with it the connection, the life-circuit, not
allow it to lapse, and so vitally starve his child.

But remember, dear reader, please, that there is not the slightest
need for you to believe me, or even read me. Remember, it's just your
own affair. Don't implicate me.

CHAPTER III

PLEXUSES, PLANES AND SO ON

The primal consciousness in man is pre-mental, and has nothing to do
with cognition. It is the same as in the animals. And this pre-mental
consciousness remains as long as we live the powerful root and body of
our consciousness. The mind is but the last flower, the _cul de sac_.

The first seat of our primal consciousnesses the solar plexus, the
great nerve-center situated behind the stomach. From this center we
are first dynamically conscious. For the primal consciousness is
always