Page:Sexology.djvu/114

known. It is upon the knowledge of this that the whole science of Lavater is based. As the same vicissitudes ordi- narily affect both the husband and wife, it is altogether natural that the muscles concerned in expressing the resulting emotions should impress similar modifications upon the countenance of each. But, in our view, there is an additional and far more interesting reason for this resemblance, which we mention with some diffidence, inas- much as, so far as we are aware, it has never hitherto been noticed. During the whole period of ante-natal exist- ence the child derives the elements of its growth and development from materials furnished by the mother tl) rough the circulating medium — the blood. But the child is not all mother, as it certainly partakes also of the physi- cal nature of the father. Now, the blood, in passing through the economy of the infant, while parting with those ingredients necessary for its growth and sustenance, must receive, reciprocally, something of the individual nature of the new being ; that is to say, of the father him- self. This, in turn, it communicates to the mass of blood circulating in the mother's system; so that, in fact, the child has impregnated the mother with the hlood of thS. father. Successive pregnancies can only add to the inti- macy of this admixture, and as the blood is that which supplies and nourishes both form and feature, it can hardly happen otherwise than that a veritable physical resemblance should result. If this be true, and we see nothing unrea- sonable in our hypothesis, the expression of Adam, "bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh," becomes of literal signif- icance, and the beauty and intimacy of the marriage rela- tion are infinitely enhanced. It would also perfectly explain the otherwise mysterious resemblance, so often remarked, between the children of the second marriages of