3. Where the organizations are equally balanced, the circumstances attending the particular act of fecundation determine the result. So the sexes of the children of such unions are apt to be pretty equally distributed.
"We do not propose, nor is this the arena for a discussion of the considerations which have led to these conclusions. We merely state them in this connection, and invite atten- tion to the subject, confident that they will be found correct. We wish to anticipate, however, a single objection that will probably be raised in the circumstance that statistics prove that, in the whole number of births, boys are in excess of girls, and that the preponderance of males is considerably greater for legitimate than for illegitimate births. So far as this touches our theory at all, we see nothing contradictory; for certainly the fathers of illegiti- mate offspring are ordinarily the most passionate of men.^* The influence upon offspring of the moral disposition of the parents at the moment of procreation is a subject of vast interest and importance. Thus, it is a fact of common remark, that "love children" are often physically and men- tally of rare perfection. So the earlier children of a mar- riage are apt to excel those born at a time when the parents seek only the grosser gratifications of the senses in their approaches, divested of the sentiment of their younger days. The generative function is intensified by gayety, content- ment, and in fact by all the expansive emotions, while depressive emotions, as trouble, fear, and anxiety, paralyze it. Intellectual labor and violent emotions repress it. The power of the imagination is demonstrated in all that relates to the pleasures of love. Astonishing proofs are extant of the intimate physiological relation between everything per- taining to generation and the simple imagination. Trevi- ranus tells of a woman whose breasts were distended with
