Human birth

“ I mean especially on the physical side. What are our medical folk doing? There are lots of books on childbirth and the science of parturition, and the best methods of making the transition easy; but when it comes to the end of life and the event corresponding and complementary to birth, there is little except silence and dismay. ”

“ Animals cannot have any high thoughts; nor can the angels, or Devas, attain to direct freedom without human birth. ”

“ The act of birth is a leap. At one stroke a fetus, which had hitherto constituted a portion of the organism of the mother, sharing in her circulation, receiving nourishment from her, without breathing, becomes an independent human being, with its own circulatory system, that breathes and cries, takes its own nourishment and utilizes its digestive tract. ”

“ It is not necessary to assume that the fœtus which becomes at birth the human infant is before birth animated by a soul; for it is not necessary to suppose, nor is it apparently true, that the physical organism is complete until birth takes place and the breath of life enters the lungs, thus constituting a new life other than that of the fœtus or the unborn child, although the one is a continuation of the other. ”

“ Perhaps the root of the difficulty lies in the fact that childbirth, as well as the attendant suffering and death, are so familiar that they are regarded as being normal incidents in the ordinary course of affairs.
One of the most dramatic of all human events, the birth of a new being, is accepted casually, almost without concern, because it is so frequent—so commonplace. ”

“ But from the ontogenic record no chapter can be torn out: a fresh copy of the whole history, from alpha to omega, is written out every time an infant is conceived, and born, and grows to manhood. And somewhere on the way between the first cell of the embryo and maturity each one must repeat in his own life that wonderful transition into human intelligence. ”

“ Give conception, Sinivāli; give conception, Sarasvati. May the two Asvins, wreathed with lotus, give conception to thee. The embryo which the two Asvins produce with their golden kindling sticks, that embryo we call into thy womb, that thou mayst give birth to it after ten months. As the earth is pregnant with Agni, as the heaven is pregnant with Indra, as Vāyu dwells in the womb of the regions (of the earth) , thus I place an embryo in thy womb. Open thy womb; take in the sperm. May a male child, an embryo, be begotten in the womb. ”

“ From the moment of conception, during the months of gestation, at the time of childbirth and after, changes of great interest take place in the germ of human life and in the body of the mother. Her body is marvelously fitted for the reception and development of the ovum, the embryo and the fetus through the various stages of fertilization, germination, development, maturity, to the time of the eventual exit of the child into the outer world to begin its own independent life. ”

“ Yes; the grand key to the theory of fœtal development; for embryonic progress is fœtal development. But on what is the assertion based that they form a key to the history of creation? Aurelia are not human bodies laid out for the sepulchre, nor are butterflies human souls; as certainly gestation is not creation, nor a life of months in the uterus a succession of races for millions of ages outside of it. ”

“ Once the proper physical conditions are set up by the parents, life pursues its marvellous progress in the womb of the human mother, from the amoeba-like initial embryo to man. That is to say, parents set in motion the laws governing the reproduction of physical bodies. They create such conditions as enable the invisible life-force to begin its physical manifestation. ”

“ The ideas which are now entertained respecting fecundation, after the successful congress of the two sexes, in the human species—respecting its seat—respecting the first origin, station, and rudimental creation of the embryo—respecting the journey of the latter into the womb, its sojourn in that cavity, and the various metamorphoses it undergoes therein, up to the period fixed for its projection into the WORLD, may be comprised within a small number of propositions. ”

“ My guess is that, a few years in the future, there will occur the most unique birth ever known to man—a birth in reverse. Some couple, somewhere—perhaps someone we know here in Allertown—will live through the experience of the daughter they never knew reentering the mother's womb and retracing her steps through the embryo stage to the moment of conception. ”

“ If the loss of blood was at first the only recognized cause of death, the act of birth was clearly the only process of life-giving. The portal by which a child entered the world was regarded, therefore, not only as the channel of birth, but also as the actual giver of life. ”

“ The child at Nan's breast stirred in its sleep and threw up its tiny hands in the convulsive movement which is the human embryo's first unconscious protest against the helplessness of which it is born inheritor. ”

“ Teacher and student should be familiar with the obstetrics of this Science. To attend properly the birth of the new child, or the divine idea, you should so detach mortal thought from its material conceptions, that the birth will be natural and safe. ”

“ From this stage to the stage of complete development a satisfactory series of embryos has now been collected, but it is impossible to give here, even in outline, a description of the evolution of the human embryo. ”

“ The first tablet of the series [145] of which an extract has just been given, begins with an enumeration of various animals to which a newly born infant bears a resemblance and which is expressed, similarly to what we found in the animal birth-omens, by the phrase that the woman gives birth to the animal in question. The series begins as follows:
If a woman gives birth, and the offspring cries in the womb, the land will encounter sickness. ”

“ The child in the womb begins as a cell, and develops through the stages of evolution, becoming an embryo worm, fish, quadruped, ape, and, finally, a human baby.
The child is born with the bodily and mental qualities inherited from many generations of beasts and many generations of men. ”

“ To make the distinction, one ought to be familiar with an individual from birth, and to have some knowledge of the conditions to which he was exposed, in the period between conception and birth,—for of course a modification which takes place during that time is as truly an acquired character as one that takes place after parturition. ”

“ No one denies, I believe, that there are multitudes of analogies and affinities of structure and function connecting man with other living- beings. Man takes his origin in an ovum similar in form, in size, and in structure to that whence the dog or the rabbit arise. The physical process which determines the development of the embryo within that ovum; the successive stages of that development; the mode in which the human foetus is nourished within the maternal organism ”

“ When the female germ and male sperm unite, then is the inception of a new life; all that goes to make up a human being—body, mind and spirit, must be contained in embryo within this minute organism. Life must be present from the very moment of conception. If there was not life there could be no conception. ”

“ Every man, and consequently all mankind, has accomplished his uninterrupted embryological development on his own account; no man and no human cell springs from the womb of an ape or any other animal, but only from the womb of a human mother, fertilised by a human father. ”

“ More curious still the living foetus in the womb passes in nine months through all the chief changes that the human race has gone through in countless aeons of time in its progress from the tadpole to the man. ”

“ To the man who has any biological knowledge, all the wonderful processes of the growth of the unseen embryo, leading up to birth, are full of amazed wonder. If a man knows, as all should in these days (see my book, Married Love, for information about the fundamental processes of mating) how minute is the single sperm cell from which his growing child takes its rise, the immensity of the results of the activity of that tiny cell appear indeed stupendous. ”

“ Schoolboys administer law among themselves much as a tribal court does; babies sit like monkeys, with the soles of their little feet facing each other. Such resemblances led, [7] long before the age of Darwin, to the speculation that children in developing passed through stages similar to those the race had passed through; and the speculation has become an accepted doctrine since embryology has shown how each individual before birth passes in successive stages through the lower forms of life. ”

“ Thus it has come to pass that while babies are born and grow up in every household, and while the gradual unfolding of their faculties has been watched with the keenest interest and intensest joy by intelligent and even scientific fathers and mothers from time immemorial, yet very little has yet been done in the scientific study of this most important of all possible subjects—the [2] ontogenetic evolution of the faculties of the human mind. ”

“ All That a Child Possesses at Birth Not Necessarily Hereditary.—We come now to the more specific discussion of what may happen to offspring of mammals, and particularly man, in the interval between fertilization and birth ”

“ In the human embryo, indeed, we find ourselves [17] in the midst of highly significant indications of man's origin. The body of man passes in its early development through a series of stages, in each of which it resembles the mature or the embryo state of certain animals lower in the stage of existence. ”

“ In view of these facts, it is evident that at the very instant of conception the embryonic human being possesses all the right to life it ever can possess. It is just as much an individual, a distinct human being, possessed of soul and body, as it ever is, though in a very immature form. That conception may take place during the reproductive act cannot be denied. ”

“ Midway between the slowly evolving phases in utero and the slowly evolving phases of aftergrowth, there is in the case of the human body a great and sudden change at the moment when it first becomes separated from that of its parent. ”

“ A Wrong to the Mother and Child.—Sometimes the mother is diseased; the outlet from the womb, as a result of laceration by a previous child-birth, is frequently enlarged, thus allowing conception to take place very readily, and hence she has children in rapid succession. ”

“ We have now reached a point in our discussion at which Birth and womb phantasies we may perhaps profitably pause awhile to consider a group of phantasies, which, on account of their widespread occurrence and curious character, would seem to deserve some very special attention at the hands of the psychologist and anthropologist. ”

“ Are the phantasies concerning birth in any way more vivid or frequent or of greater emotional intensity in those whose birth has been a process of difficulty and long duration than in those who have enjoyed an easy delivery? ”

“ Thus it is evident and confirmed that the development and growth of man on this earth, until he reached his present perfection, resembled the growth and development of the embryo in the womb of the mother: by degrees it passed from condition to condition, from form to form, from one shape to another, for this is according to the requirement of the universal system and Divine Law. ”

“ In no department of life is the specialisation of function among the numina more conspicuous than in connection with birth and childhood. Apart from the general protection of Iuno Lucina, the prominent divinity of childbirth, we can count in the records that have come down to us some twenty subordinate spirits, who from the moment of conception to the moment of birth watched, each in its own [45] particular sphere, over the mother and the unborn child. ”

“ Correspondence of Natural Birth to Spiritual Birth.
It is known that the soul of man has its beginning in an ovum of the mother, is afterwards perfected in her womb, and is there encompassed with a tender body, of such a nature that the soul may suitably act by means of it in the world into which it is born. The case is similar when man is born again, that is when he is regenerated. ”

“ Although the childbearing function is the origin and source of the human race, existing throughout the ages, the processes connected with it have only in recent years been clearly understood.
Our present-day knowledge of the processes connected with childbirth makes it easy to understand how, in the early ages of the human race, the function was a normal function, with little or no danger to mother or child. ”

“ If the propagation of a higher human species is requisite to reach this goal, then its material conditions can only be permitted for the purpose of generating, the fœtus must be kept mentally pure, and the period of gestation have the sanctity of virginity. ”

“ For the being born from the womb is common in respect to us, but the being born without marriage is a thing greater than on a level with us. And the gestation and conception in the belly belongs to human nature ”

“ Take, for example, the facts regarding the development of the human embryo. The rationalist notes that as it develops it bears a striking resemblance, successively, to the more mature forms of some of the lower animals, in an imagined orderly progress from lower to higher. ”

“ We speak of nothing anterior to the time when our earth assumed the dignity of maternity, and brought forth its first and only child. We shall trace the development of that child which, though millions of years old, is still in dependence on its parent. We shall describe the influence of the parent over the child, and the not less remarkable reaction of the child upon the parent. We shall foreshadow the destiny which still awaits the mother and child when millions of years shall have elapsed. ”