Feminism; Women; Women -- Social and moral questions; Women -- Social conditions
"We do not attempt to feed our female calves so well as we feed the
bulls. It is too costly. Our heifers are put on 'the bucket' when three
days old. I buy a cow to rear my bull-calves on. I once reared a bull on
'the bucket' satisfactorily. But I gave him twelve gallons of new milk
every day after he was five months old, and kept it up till he was
fourteen months. _One cow that gives three gallons does a calf just as
well as twelve gallons_ viâ _the bucket, and is much cheaper._ Some
crack bulls have three and four five-gallon cows at once, and go to
Shows with all their nurses in attendance.
"Once I reared a bull as we rear the heifers. But he was a failure. His
daughters are only half the size they ought to be."
(An example of direct developmental inheritance--in terms of
deterioration--from father to daughter.)
XIV
Comparing a calf with a human baby, it becomes self-evident that the
diet suited for the large, crude creature which trots about on four legs
shortly after birth must be wholly unsuited to the delicate digestion
and the subtle psychological needs of the small and complex,
highly-organised human infant, which remains so long a helpless infant.
The all-important _proteid_ of every order of creature differs from that
of every other. Before any form of alien _proteid_ can be built into the
body of a living organism, the digestion and assimilation of this
creature must first have laboriously disintegrated and reconstructed it
to the form of its own individual _proteid_.
The Irish tradition that persons not nursed during infancy by their
mothers are beings without souls has much to justify it. Even the
ill-nourished, sickly babes of working-mothers have an essentially
_human_ look in eyes and features, possess far more of nervous power,
and are of appreciably higher and more intelligent psychology than are
the bottle-fed infants of the cultured.
The bottle-fed start handicapped for life, both in constitution and
mentality. It is safe to say that all great men and women have been
suckled by their mothers or have come of stock thus humanly nurtured.
That they were thus humanly nurtured during their momentous first nine
months of life, is the reason, doubtless, why so many of our greatest
men have sprung from humble origin.
The incapacity of a mother to nourish the babe she has borne should be
known for a mark of degeneracy--sign, too, that she was unfitted to
have borne a child, because deficient in the vital reserve requisite to
carry her maternal function to its normal biological and psychological
conclusion. Just as a statesman or a general would be held unfitted for
_his_ function, if he should lack the physical and mental enterprise to
complete his national undertakings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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