relations, their feelings, and their treatment of all with whom they may be associated, must depend greatly on these ante-natal influences and tendencies. The life of every good man and the life of every bad man, the life of a teetotaller and the life of a drunkard, a life of love and a life of hatred, a life of forgiveness and a life of revenge, a life of truth, justice, and purity, and a life of falsehood, injustice, and impurity, the life of Jesus and the life of Napoleon,—who can determine to what extent all these have been, are, or will be, controlled by birthright tendencies, and by influences that, before they were born, bore upon those who live these lives? Certain it is that, to a great extent, the diseases, sufferings, and premature deaths, and many of the individual, social, governmental, and ecclesiastical thefts, robberies, and murders, committed in the post-natal state of our being, are but the natural, if not the necessary results of these ante-natal organic and constitutional conditions and tendencies. To all Husbands and Wives, to all Fathers and Mothers, and to all who hope to enter into these most ennobling and most potent of all human relations, are the following pages earnestly commended, by THE AUTHOR. INTRODUCTORY LETTER. A Husband to Henry C. Wright. BOSTON, January 10, 1857. MY DEAR FRIEND: It is twenty years since I first heard you discourse on the Mission and Relation of the Sexes. You stated then, in substance, that the sexes had power, each over the other, to save or to destroy; that all rational hope of the elevation and perfection of human nature must rest upon a knowledge of, and obedience to, the laws of Nature, designed to govern those relations; that man must look to _generation_, rather than to _re_generation, to bring the race into perfect union and harmony with the Divine; that no power could save either man or woman, in isolation from, or in false relations with, each other; and that if either sinks or rises, the other must follow. I was but a boy when I first heard you utter such sentiments. I did not then understand their full import. They had not entered into the experience of my inner or outer life. Yet I took the impression, that woman would be to man just what he chose and had power to make her; and that it depended on man to say whether woman should be to him a purifying and ennobling influence, or a source of degradation and ruin. From that time I had a desire, so far as woman is concerned, to place myself in such relations to her, that her influence on my life might be pure and ennobling. I have studied to get clear and definite views of my nature and needs as a man, and how woman can most perfectly accomplish her mission of love and salvation to me.