her ancestors. What hope of happiness, or noble ambition hovers around the child inheriting propensities that must be overcome, or reduce him to a loathsome wreck. For propagating the human species, is there not greater responsibility than for your garden culture, or the stock of your flocks and herds? Nothing should be transmitted to offspring unworthy to perpetuate. The formation and education of even mortal mind, must improve before the millennium. The most important education of the infant is to keep it mentally free from impurity, and let mind develop the body harmoniously; mind, and not matter, should govern the physical. For parents to create a desire in their child for incessant amusement, always to have some demand on hand to be fed, rocked, tossed, or talked to, and afterwards complain of their child's fretfulness, or in after years of its frivolity,—all of which they have occasioned, is an error.
Yielding one's thoughts to contemplate physical wants surely produces them. A single requirement beyond what is necessary to meet the most modest needs of the babe is hurtful. The condition of the stomach, bowels, food, clothing, etc., is of no serious import to your child. Your views regarding them will produce the only result they can have on the health of your child. The daily ablution of an infant is not more natural or necessary than to take a fish out of water and cover it with dirt, once a day, that it may thrive better in its natural element. Cleanliness is next to godliness, but washing should be only to keep the body clean, and this can be done with less than daily scrubbing the whole surface.
