Reproduction In Kind

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Title:     Reproduction In Kind
Author: Timothy Titcomb [More Titles by Titcomb]

"Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
ST. PAUL TO THE GALATIANS.

"Ye shall know them by their fruits:
Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?"
ST. MATTHEW'S GOSPEL.

It was fitting that one of the most characteristic and beautiful laws of life should be announced in the opening chapter of the Holy Bible. It was clothed in the form of an ordinance, as became it: "Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth, after his kind." From that day to this, every living thing--beast, bird and insect, tree, shrub and plant--has produced after its kind. It is a law that runs through all animal and vegetable life. Each family in the great world of living forms was created for a special purpose, and was intended to remain pure and distinctive until the termination of its mission. Whenever the family boundaries are overstepped, the curse of nature is breathed upon the generative functions, and the illegitimate product dies out, or subsides into hopeless degeneration. The mule is a monster, and has no progeny.

A plant, or a tree, never forgets itself. Cheat it of its root, and the stem remains faithful. The minutest twig, put out to nurse upon the arm of a foreign mother, feels the thrill of the great primal law in its filmiest fibre, and breathes in every expression of its life its fidelity. If you will walk with me into the garden, I will show you a mountain-ash in full bloom; but on the top of it you will see a strange little cluster of pear-blossoms. A twig from a Seckel pear-tree was, two or three years since, engrafted there. It had a hard time in uniting its being to that of the alien ash, but it loved life, and so, at length, it consented to join itself to the transplanted forest tree. It was weak and alone, but it kept its law. Spring bathed the ash with its own peculiar bloom, and autumn hung it with its clusters of scarlet berries, and it was hidden from sight by the redundant foliage, but it kept its law. The roots of the mountain-ash, blindly reaching in the ground and imbibing its juices, knew nothing of the little orphaned twig above, that waited for its food; but they could not cheat it of its law. Up to a certain point of a certain bough the rising fluids came under the law of the mountain-ash, and there they found a gateway, guarded by an angel that gave them a new commandment. "Thus far--mountain-ash: beyond--Seckel pear;" and if, in October, you will walk in the garden again with me, I will show you among the scarlet berries, bending heavily toward you, the clustered succulence of the Seckel.

A seedsman may cheat you, but a seed never does. If you plant corn, it never comes up potatoes. If you sow wheat, it never comes up rye. Wrapped up in every capsule, bound up in every kernel, packed into every minutest germ, is this law, written by God at the beginning, "Produce thou after thy kind." So the whole living world goes on producing after its kind. Year after year we visit the seedsman, and read the labels on his drawers and packages, and bear home and plant in our gardens the little homely germs that keep God's law so well; and summer rewards our trust in them with beautiful flowers, and autumn with bountiful fruition. Robins sang the same song to the Pilgrim Fathers that they sing to us. The may-flower breathes the same fragrance now that it breathed in the fingers of Rose Standish; and man and woman, producing after their kind, are the same to-day that they were three thousand years ago.

Now there is a significance in all the laws of material life, above and beyond their special office. They do the work they were set to do; they rule the life they were appointed to rule; but the laws, themselves, belong to a family whose branches run through all intellectual, moral, and spiritual life. Laws live in groups no less uniformly than the existences which they inform and govern. It is a law, both of animal and vegetable structures, that they shall grow by what they feed on; but this law passes the bounds of matter, and finds its widest meaning and its most extended application beyond. The mind grows by what it feeds on; the heart grows by what it feeds on; love, hate, jealousy, revenge, fortitude, courage, grow by what they feed on; spirituality grows by what spirituality feeds on. Wherever growth goes, through all the realm of God, this law goes; and the law that every thing that produces shall produce after its kind, is just as universal as this. It begins in material life, and runs up through all life. Rather, perhaps, I should say, that it begins in spiritual life, and seeks embodiment in material life, so that we may apprehend it. The clouds were in heaven before there was any rain, and the rain comes down from heaven to tell us what the clouds are made of. I might go further, and say that every form, of matter is but the embodiment of a divine thought, and that, with that thought, there passes into matter the laws that reside in divine things of corresponding nature and office.

But I am becoming abstruse--quite too much so, considering the simple, practical truths to which I am seeking to introduce my reader. I have been thinking how, in accordance with this law of which we are talking, our moods, our passions, our sympathies, our moral frames and conditions, reproduce themselves, after their kind, in the minds and lives around us. I call my child to my knee in anger; I strike him a hasty blow that carries with it the peculiar sting of anger; I speak a loud reproof that bears with it the spirit of anger; and I look in vain for any relenting in his flashing eyes, flushed face, and compressed lips. I have made my child angry, and my uncontrolled passion has produced after its kind. I have sown anger, and I have reaped anger instantaneously. Perhaps I become still more angry, in consequence of the passion manifested by my child, and I speak and strike again. He is weak and I am strong; but, though he bow his head, crushed into silence, I may be sure that there is a sullen heart in the little bosom, and anger the more bitter because it is impotent. I put the child away from me, and think of what I have done. I am full of relentings. I long to ask his pardon, for I know that I have offended and deeply injured one of Christ's little ones. I call him to me again, press his head to my breast, kiss him, and weep. No word is spoken, but the little bosom heaves, the little heart softens, the little eyes grow tenderly penitent, the little hands come up and clasp my neck, and my relentings and my sorrow have produced after their kind. The child is conquered, and so am I.

If I utter fretful words, they come back to me like echoes. If I bristle all over with irritability, the quills will begin to rise all about me. One thoroughly irritable person in a breakfast-room spoils coffee and toast, sours milk, and destroys appetite for a whole family. He produces after his kind.

Generally, a man has around him those who are like him. If he be a man of strong nature and positive qualities, he will plant his moods and grow them in the natures next to him. Of course there must be exceptions to this rule, because the will is free and man is reasonable, and the motive and power to pluck up unwelcome seed, and unpleasant growths, inheres in all men. I have known a good-natured man to live with a pettish, ill-natured, jealous, fault-finding wife through all the years of my acquaintance with him, he meantime growing no worse, and she growing no better. They had voluntarily and effectually shut themselves each from the influence of the other. He had closed his spirit against that which was bad in her, and she had closed her spirit against that which was good in him; so she went on fretting through life, and he very good-naturedly laughing at her. We see this thing through all society. We see innocent girls grow up into virtue, though surrounded on every side by vicious example. We see natures and characters everywhere which refuse to receive the seed that falls upon them from the natures and characters of others; but this makes nothing against the universality of the law we are considering. Generally, I repeat, a man has around him those who are like him. The soil of a social circle is usually open, and whatever falls into it produces after its kind, whether it be good nature or ill nature, purity or impurity, faith or skepticism, love or hate.

It would appear, therefore, that there is no way by which we can surround ourselves by good society so readily as by being good ourselves. If we plant good seed, we may calculate with a great degree of certainty upon securing good fruit. If I plant frankness and open-heartedness, I expect to reap them; and I have no right to expect to reap them unless I plant them. If I go to a man with my heart in my hand, I have good reason for expecting to meet a man with his heart in his hand. Frankness begets frankness, just as naturally and just as certainly, under the proper conditions, as like produces like in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. There are men who do every thing by indirection who meet one as warily as if words were traps; and pitfalls who manage a friendly interview as a general would manage a campaign; and if they make their demonstration first, we are placed upon our guard. We unconsciously become wary and distrustful. They plant distrust and secretiveness, and they produce in us after their kind. No man can be treated frankly in this world unless he himself be frank. If we would win confidence to ourselves, we must put confidence in others. The soul is like a mirror, reflecting that which stands before it.

The young naturally take on the moods and accept and reflect the influences around them more readily than the old, just as a new piece of land will produce a better crop than one which is worn or pre-occupied. A virgin mind is like a virgin soil. It contains all the elements of fertility, and is adapted to the production of any crop. It has been exhausted in no department of its constitution. It is not occupied by roots, and shaded by foliage. It is not turf-bound and dry; but it is soft and open, and clean and moist, and ready for the reception of any seed that may fall upon it. Until age brings individuality, the mind seems to have little choice as to what it will receive. Then, indeed, it does reject much seed that falls upon it, and much fails to take root because of the pre-occupation of the surface. A sensual seed is planted in the soul of a young man, and it springs up readily, and produces after its kind; but the same seed tossed upon an older soil fails to sink and germinate, because the surface is pre-occupied, or, more frequently, because that peculiar element on which the germ must rely for quickening and sustentation has been exhausted. Some manly or Christian grace falls upon a young mind, and quickly strikes root and rises into flower and fruit; while the same grace thrown upon an adult mind would fail to reach the soil, through the vices that cumber and choke it. It is thus that home and the school-room are literally seminaries--places where seed is sown-- and it is in these that we expect and intend that every seed shall produce after its kind. Let us talk about this a little.

I once heard a person say that one of his acquaintances, whom he named, had no moral right to have a child. Why was this harsh judgment uttered? Because he was hereditarily scrofulous, and would necessarily entail upon his offspring the family taint. If there were even a show of justice in this, what must be said of a parent who does not possess a single moral quality, that even he, in the selfishness of his parental love, would desire to see implanted in his child? How many homes are scattered over Christendom in which no good seed is sown! How many selfish, niggardly, vicious parents are there, who, producing after their kind, by generation and by influence, are filling the world with selfish, niggardly, and vicious children! How many homes are there in which the gentle words of love are never heard; in which the tender graces of a Christian heart are never unfolded; in which a prayer is never uttered! How many fathers are there whose lips are black with profanity and foul with obscenity, and whose lives are mean and unwholesome! How many mothers are there whose tongues are nimble with scandal and bitter with scolding, and whose brains are busy with vanities and jealousies! Ah! if there be any man or woman in this world who has no moral right to have a child, it is one who has not a single trait of character desirable to be reproduced in a child. Scrofula may be bad, but sin is worse. Bodily taint may be terrible, but spiritual taint is horrible.

It is a general truth, under the law that every thing produces after its kind, that children become what their parents are. A simple people, virtuous and healthy, will produce virtuous, healthy, and true-hearted children, A luxurious people--lazy, sensual, wasteful--will produce children like themselves. If we go through the vicious quarters of a great city, where licentiousness and drunkenness and beastly vices prevail, we shall find that though all die before old age, the communities are abundantly recruited by the children which they produce. Men, principles, habits, ideas, vices, all have children, whose features betray their parentage; so that no parent has a right to expect a child to be better than its father and mother. On the contrary, he has every reason to believe that every thing that a child sees wrong in the parents, will be imitated. There is no way by which bad parents can bring up a family well. There must be in the parental life good principles, a sweet and equable temper, a tender and loving disposition, a firm self-control, a pleasant deportment, and a conscientious devotion to duty, or these will not be found in the life of the children. Bad seed, sown in the quick soil of a child's mind, is sure to spring up, and to bear fruit after its kind. No sensible man ever dreams of gathering figs from thistles, or grapes from bramble-bushes, and no man has the slightest right to suppose that he can bring up a family to be better than he is. The plant will be true to the seed.

We are in the habit of hearing that the children of a certain neighborhood, or school, or town, are extraordinarily bad children. Great wonder is sometimes expressed in regard to such instances, when, really, they are not wonderful at all. When children are unusually bad, parents are unusually bad, or, if they are not bad-hearted, they are wrong-headed. I ought, perhaps, to say here that I have known an irascible, tyrannical, unjust and cruel school-teacher to spoil a neighborhood of children, when the parents were without any special fault, save that of failing to thrust him out of the charge which he had abused. But usually the fault is at home. If the seed planted there be good, it will produce good fruit. Yet my reader will say that the best man he ever knew, had the worst children he ever saw. The truth of the statement is admitted, but what do you know of the home life of that family? How much unreasonable restraint has been exercised upon those children? From how many exhibitions of stern and unrelenting injustice have these children suffered? What laxity of discipline and carelessness of culture have reigned in that family? I know many who seem to be excellent men in society, but who are any thing but amiable men at home. In one they are pleasant, affable, kind, and charitable; in the other, cross-grained, hard, unkind, and unjust. I declare with all positiveness, that when a family or a neighborhood of children is bad, there is a reason for it outside of the children. There are bad influences which descend upon them, and work out their natural results in them.

It is astonishing to see how long a seed will lie in the ground without germinating, and how true it will remain to its kind through untold years. Cut down a pine forest, where an oak has not been seen for a century, and oak shrubbery will spring up. Heave out upon the surface a pile of earth that has lain hidden from the eyes of a dozen generations, and forthwith it will grow green with weeds. Plough up the prairie, and turn under the grass and flowers that have grown there since the white settler can remember, and there will spring from the inverted sod a strange growth that has had no representative in the sunlight for long ages. Soul and soil are alike in this. I once heard a man say of his father, who had been dead many years--"I hate him: I hate his memory." The words were spoken bitterly, with a flushed face and angry eyes, yet he who spoke them was one of the kindest and most placable of men. Deep down in his heart, under love for his mother which was almost worship, and under affection for wife, children, and sisters which was as deep as his nature, and under multiplied friendships, there had been planted this seed. The father had treated the boy harshly and unjustly; and the young soul was stung as the tender fruit is stung by an insect. Where anger and resentment were sown, anger and resentment were ready to spring up the moment the seed was uncovered. I have known men to carry through life a revenge planted in their hearts by some unjust and cruel schoolmaster. How many men are there are in the world who have sworn to revenge themselves upon one who had stung them with anger or injustice when in childhood!

So we come to the grand lesson, that if we would have good children, we must ourselves be exactly what we would have them become; if we would govern our families, we must first govern ourselves; if we would have only pleasant words greet our ears in the home circle, we must speak only pleasant words. We should see to it that we plant nothing, the legitimate fruits of which we shall not be willing and glad to see borne in the lives of our children. If our children are bad, the fault is, ninety-nine cases in a hundred, our own, in some way. If we would reform society, or make it better in any respect, our quickest way to do it is to reform and make ourselves better. If I would reap courtesy and hospitality and kindness and love, I must plant them; and it is the sum of all arrogance to assume that I have a right to reap them without planting them. A man who receives courtesy without exercising it, reaps that which he has not sown. He is a thief, and ought in justice to be kicked out of society. Blessings on the man who sows the seeds of a happy nature and a noble character broadcast wherever his feet wander,--who has a smile alike for joy and sorrow, a tender word always for a child, a compassionate utterance for suffering, courtesy for friends and for strangers, encouragement for the despairing, an open heart for all--love for all--good words for all! Such seed produces after its kind in all soils, when it finds lodgment; and that which the sower fails to reap, passes into hands that are grateful for the largess.

[The end]
Timothy Titcomb's essay: Reproduction In Kind

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