Radiant Motherhood/Chapter 2

IN ancient Sanskrit, there is a work dealing minutely with love and with the different forms its expression takes in different types of people. This has been modified, ​added to and re-written by many later authors, and under various names works based on this are to be found in Sanskrit and translated into various Indian dialects.

In these volumes much that is curious, and to Western nations, absurd, is to be found, but also several profound observations which appear to be based on truths generally ignored by us. One of the interesting themes of these very early writers is a recognition and a description of the characteristics of the best and most perfect type of woman, the "Padmini." In addition to describing fully her physical appearance and characteristics, it is observed that she being a child of light and not of darkness, prefers the supreme act of love to take place in the daylight rather than the dark.

In this country, owing to our artificial, overburdened and over-strained lives, the physical union of lovers is almost always confined to the night time. Crowded as we are in cities and suburban districts, solitude in Nature is almost impossible; for most, seclusion is only known in a closed room after dark. The Sanskrit writer of the sixth century, however, takes love more seriously than we do, and he describes how for the sacred union serious preparation of beauty should be made—a room or natural arbour decked with flowers; and for the supreme expression of love (that is the ​love between a pair each of the highest and most perfect type), this should take place in the light of day and not the darkness of the night. Even in our present degraded civilization there are some who do realize the sacredness and the value of the bodily embrace in the fresh beauty of nature and sunlight. There must be many beautiful children who were conceived from unions which took place under natural conditions of light and open air radiance. The most spontaneous time for conception is the summer when our air is mild and sweet enough for true love in Nature's way.

In an empire where woodland or seaside solitude is not obtainable by lovers for this their most sacred function, the distribution of the population is gravely wrong. It will, however, probably for some time to come be difficult for those who desire such a profound return to natural rectitude, to obtain the necessary security of seclusion amid beautiful surroundings. Therefore, alas, it will in all probability long remain only possible to most lovers to ramble together in nature, and then later to follow the usual course of uniting within their room.

We do not know enough about ourselves or the results of our actions, under our present conditions, to realize to what extent the hour of conception modifies the quality of the off​spring. We only know that the child of lovers beautiful in mind and body, the child ardently desired by them, whose coming is prepared with every beauty which it is in their power to obtain, is often well worth all the outlay of love and thought. Certainly among those personally known to me who have followed the rather exceptional course I indicate, the children are remarkable for both physical beauty and exquisite vitality, balanced with sweetness and strength of mental and spiritual qualities.

There is an old and in my opinion valuable view (although it has not been "scientifically proved") that the actual hour of conception, the condition of the parents at the moment when the germs fuse is one of vital consequences to the child-to-be. Scientific proof of this will be, of course, extraordinarily difficult to discover, but indirectly there do appear to be some actual data in favour of the converse, namely that temporary unhealthy states of the parents result in the conception of children so inferior as to be markedly and seriously antisocial. Forel (Sexual Question, 1908) says:—

The recent researches of Bezzola seem to prove that the old belief in the bad quality of children conceived during drunkenness is not without foundation. Relying on the Swiss census of 1900, in which there figure nine thousand idiots . . . this author has proved that there are two acute annual maximum periods for the conception of idiots (calculated ​from nine months before birth) the periods of carnival and vintage, when the people drink most. In the wine-growing districts, the maximum conception of idiots at the time of vintage is enormous, while it is almost nil at other periods.

It is, of course, not always possible to arrange the hour of the union which will lead to conception. And further even when the hour of the union is arranged, nature, to some extent, controls and may modify conditions before conception. Sometimes the fertilization of the egg cell by the sperm cell takes place in the hour of the bodily union of the lovers, sometimes this inner process is delayed by hours or days (see overleaf). Conception is possible in most women at almost any time during the years of potential motherhood, yet there do appear to be several factors which lead to the potential fertility of a woman varying very much from time to time. Some women, for instance, appear to be liable to conceive only for a certain number of days in each month, and these are in general the two or three days immediately following the monthly period and the day or two immediately before. With other women, however, unions on any day of the month may lead to conception, but this depends, possibly, not only on the woman herself but on the vitality and probable length of life of the sperm cells of her husband. This also varies very greatly in individuals. The ​longest time which the individual sperm has been observed to remain vital after entry into the woman is seventeen days (sec Bossi, N. Arch. d'Obstetr. Gynocol., April 1891).

Hence it will be realized that a union arranged to take place under ideal and perfect conditions, perhaps on a holiday into wild and inspiring solitudes, may result as desired in the entry of the sperm into the womb of the woman, and yet the actual fusion of the sperm and egg cell, and the consequent conception may not come to pass until some days later.

Strange it is indeed in this world, in which so much scientific and laborious observation has been devoted to all sorts of irrelevant and trivial subjects, that knowledge of the actual processes of our own fertilization and conception and of the extent of the significance to the future generations of the mode and condition of the union of the parents are almost totally unknown to scientists or doctors, and are disregarded by the majority of the public.

A recent memoir in the French Academy of Science^[1] dealing with statistical figures (going back in France, at any rate, so far as 1853) proves that there does seem to be a definite seasonal influence on the power of conception. ​Taking the births for the whole year, it is found they are not equally divided throughout the months, but that a notable- maximum of births is found in February and March for most of the countries in the northern hemisphere, the actual maximum of births being from the 15th February to the 15th March, and thus indicating that the maximum of conceptions took place between the 5th May and the 5th June. Richet quotes Bertillon as having established the fact that this maximum of conceptions does not depend on the chance that brides like to be married in the spring, because an identical maximum is found in the illegitimate birthrate. Richet gives many tables of figures, and maintains that the maximum corresponds both in the town and in the country, among the rich and the poor, and among the married and the unmarried, and is, therefore, in his opinion, an actual physiological function:—

C'est que les conditions physiologiques de la maturation de l'ovule et de sa fécondation ne sont pas également favorables dans toutes les periodes de l'année. Par suite d'une ancestrale prédisposition, au moment du printemps, chez la femme, comme chez la plupart des animaux, mais moins nettement que chez eux, la maturation, la chute et la fécondation de l'ovule se font dans des conditions meilleures et plus assurées.

The corresponding maximum for the southern hemisphere arises between August and October. ​This natural tendency to produce children according to the season is, to some extent, altered by the conscious and deliberate control of parenthood, which all the more highly civilized countries now find that their better citizens are exerting.

This natural time for conception will, however, tend not to be thwarted by those who are consciously regulating their lives, because from almost every point of view, the summer is the best time in which to experience the joys of love. As the verdant spring is the best time for a baby to be born, the thoughtful mother-to-be will try, other things being equal, to arrange that its birth should take place then, both for her own sake and for that of the child. The weeks of recovery after the strain of the birth are more easily and happily spent lying in the warm sunshine of a spring or summer garden than in the chill of the winter months, and even the actual expense of the birth is reduced when it takes place in the warmth of the spring or early summer when fires and the labour they involve will be saved.

The child too has warm air to surround it on its first introduction to the outer world after its long period of warmth and protection within its mother, and when in a month or two it is able to kick about on the grass, it benefits ​directly from the rays of the sun and also from the sun-warmed earth.

Various notable men and women, and, in particular, the famous Dr. Trall of America, have held that the actual hour of conception is the one of fate, and that the moods, feelings and conditions of the parents in that hour work more vital magic then than they can do in any succeeding days or weeks. Instinctively, one would like to feel that this is so. Indeed it will take much to disprove it, although it is a theme which it is at present impossible to prove, and it must remain always only a personal bias, until thousands of people who view marriage aright will consciously observe and record many things and contribute them to some thinker who will tabulate, correlate and understand them.

Whether the hour of conception affects the child directly or not, the memory of an ardent and wonderful experience in which the pair of lovers consciously surround themselves with beautiful conditions, and deliberately place themselves through their love at the service of God and humanity in the creation of the next generation, must give a vitalizing and joyous memory to both throughout all their lives. This memory being especially connected with the dear child of that union must, therefore, have in this indirect way at any rate a positive racial value.