INITIAL IMPRESSIONS. 207 



and purity should animate their lives! How 

 chaste, honest, kind and earnest they should be 

 when they meet with God to form a soul ! 



The law of initial impressions is well estab- 

 lished. It has been understood and applied by 

 stock raisers for centuries. ' Experiments prove 

 that the qualities most highly excited in animals Imprcs ' 

 prior to their union are most fully transmitted. 

 The speed of the horse and the acquired charac- 

 ters of the dog have been improved by the appli- 

 cations of this law. History and classic litera- 

 ture contain many references that recognize its 

 importance, like Shakespeare's "Come on, ye 

 cowards; ye were got in fear." Ancient law for- 

 bade union while parents were intoxicated, be- 

 cause such unions resulted in the production of 

 drunkards and monstrosities. 



The asylums for the feeble-minded contained 

 several hundred unfortunate ones that are the 

 product of such unions. Mrs. Stockham, M. D., 

 well says, "Many a drunkard owes his lifelong 

 appetite for alcohol to the fact that the inception 

 of his life could be traced to a night of dissipa- 

 tion on the part of his father." Fleming and 

 Demaux have shown that "not only do drunkards 

 transmit to their descendants tendency toward 

 insanity and crime, but even habitually sober 

 parents who at the moment of conception are in 

 a temporary state of drunkenness beget children 

 who are epileptic or paralytic, idiotic or insane, 

 very often micro-cephalic, or with remarkable 

 weakness of mind, which is transformed at the 

 first favorable occasion into insanity." 



The law of initial impressions, like the other 



