Ontogeny is really a new science in our century, introduced by Von
Leeuwenhock, de Graaf, and others. It was founded in 1827, by von Baer.
The differences of opinion and the discovery of different theories are
very far from being ended. Purely scientific points of view are being
combined with social, physiological, or ethical ones. It is maintained
that by changing the diet of the mother the sex of the child can be
determined. Attempts have been made to show that about three fifths of
all men of genius were first-born children.
People are studying what influence the age of parents has on the child;
extreme youth of parents seems unfavourable for the offspring as well
as extreme age. The first child of a too youthful mother is often weak,
and besides ordinarily the joys of motherhood are not desired, because
she feels that physically and psychically a child is too great a burden
to her, who herself is only a child. The conditions of a strong,
well-nourished offspring require the postponement of the marriage age
for women. In northern countries it should be established, if not by law
at least by custom, at about twenty years. This is all the more
necessary because then the young woman can have behind her some years of
careless youthful joy, an undisturbed self-development, and will also
have reached the physical development necessary for motherhood. While
twenty years should be regarded as the earliest period of marriage it
should actually be often postponed some years still for the well-being
of the woman, the man, and the children, and married life as a whole, in
which most conflicts arise because women have decided about their fate
before their personality was definitely formed, before their heart was
able to find its choice. The love of the man chooses and the young girl
often confuses the happiness of being loved with the happiness of
loving, an experience which later on is gone through in a tragic way. To
the many questions which are related to heredity and natural selection,
belongs one which notices the significance of nature's purpose to cause
strong opposites to exert upon one another the strongest attraction.
This attraction often during married life changes into antipathy; it
almost results in impatience against the characteristics which
originally had so deep an attraction. Nature in this case seems to wish
to reach its end with the greatest lack of consideration for the
happiness of the individual. So often the contradictions of parents seem
really to be moulded in full in the child. Occasionally these
contradictions are expressed as a deep discord, but in both cases there
often arises an exceptional being. To attain correct results in this
case, belongs to the numerous still open possibilities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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