Mother and Child

It seems to me fairly evident that we are connected to all things and that we have natural relations to everything that surrounds us, which are very useful to us for the preservation and convenience of life. But all these relations are not equal. We are much more connected to France than to China, to the sun than to some star, to our own house than to that of our neighbors. There are invisible bonds that attach us much more closely to men than to beasts, to our parents and our friends than to strangers, to those on whom we depend for the preservation of our being than to those from whom we neither fear nor hope anything.

What is chiefly to be noted in this natural union that exists between us and other men is that it is all the greater the more we have need of them. Parents and friends are closely united to one another: one can say that their sorrows and their miseries are common, as well as their pleasures and their felicity; for all the passions and all the feelings of our friends are communicated to us by the impression of their manner and by the air of their face. But because absolutely we can live without them, the natural union that exists between them and us is not the greatest that can be.

The communication between the brain of a mother and that of her child

Children in their mothers’ wombs, whose bodies are not yet entirely formed, and who are by themselves in a state of weakness and destitution as great as can be conceived, must also be united with their mothers in the closest manner that can be imagined. And although their soul is separated from that of their mother, their body not being detached from hers, one must think that they have the same feelings and the same passions — in a word, all the same thoughts that are excited in the soul on the occasion of the movements that occur in the body.

Thus children see what their mothers see, they hear the same cries, they receive the same impressions from objects, and they are agitated by the same passions. For since the air of the face of a passionate man penetrates those who look at him, and naturally imprints in them a passion similar to that which agitates him, although the union of this man with those who consider him is not very great — one has, it seems to me, reason to think that mothers are capable of imprinting in their children all the same feelings by which they are touched, and all the same passions by which they are agitated. For in the end, the child’s body is but one and the same body with that of the mother; the blood and the spirits are common to both; feelings and passions are natural consequences of the movements of the spirits and the blood, and these movements are necessarily communicated from the mother to the child. Therefore the passions and feelings, and generally all the thoughts of which the body is the occasion, are common to the mother and the child.

These things seem to me incontestable for several reasons.

For if one considers only that a mother greatly frightened at the sight of a cat gives birth to a child whom horror seizes every time that animal presents itself to him, it is easy to conclude that this child must have seen with horror and with emotion of spirits what his mother saw when she carried him in her womb: since the sight of a cat, which does him no harm, still produces in him such strange effects. However, I put forward all this only as a supposition, which in my opinion will be found sufficiently demonstrated in what follows. For every supposition that can satisfy the resolution of all the difficulties that can be raised must pass for an incontestable principle.

The communication that exists between our brain and the other parts of our body, which leads us to imitation and to compassion. — III. Explanation of the generation of monstrous children, and of the propagation of species. — IV. Explanation of certain disorders of the mind and of certain inclinations of the will. — V. On concupiscence and original sin. — VI. Objections and replies.

The invisible bonds by which the author of nature unites all his works are worthy of the wisdom of God and of the admiration of men; there is nothing more surprising nor more instructive together; but we do not think of them. We let ourselves be led without considering Him who leads us, nor how He leads us: nature is hidden from us as well as its author; and we feel the movements that occur in us without considering their springs. However, there are few things it is more necessary for us to know; for it is from the knowledge of them that the explanation of all things that relate to man depends.

There are certainly in our brain springs that naturally lead us to imitation, for that is necessary to civil society. Not only is it necessary that children believe their fathers; disciples, their masters; and inferiors, those who are above them: it is also necessary that all men have some disposition to adopt the same manners and to do the same actions as those with whom they wish to live. For in order that men may form bonds, it is necessary that they resemble one another both in body and in mind. This is the principle of an infinity of things of which we shall speak later. But for what we have to say in this chapter, it is also necessary that one know that there are in the brain natural dispositions that lead us to compassion as well as to imitation.

One must therefore know that not only do the animal spirits naturally flow into the parts of our body to perform the same actions and the same movements that we see others perform; but also to receive in some manner their wounds, and to share in their miseries. For experience teaches us that when we consider with great attention someone who is being rudely struck, or who has some large wound, the spirits transport themselves with effort into the parts of our body that correspond to those that we see being wounded in another, provided that we do not turn the course of these spirits elsewhere by voluntarily tickling with some force a part other than that which we see being wounded; or that the natural course of the spirits toward the heart and the viscera, which is usual in sudden emotions, does not carry away or change the one of which we speak; or finally that some extraordinary connection of the traces of the brain and the movements of the spirits does not produce the same effect.

This transport of the spirits into the parts of our body that correspond to those that we see being wounded in others is keenly felt by delicate persons, who have lively imaginations and very tender and very soft flesh. For they very often feel a kind of trembling in their legs, for example, if they attentively look at someone who has an ulcer there, or who is currently receiving a blow there. Here is what one of my friends writes to me, which may confirm my thought: “An elderly man, who lives at my sister’s house, being ill, a young maidservant of the household held the candle while he was being bled at the foot. When she saw him given the lancet stroke, she was seized with such apprehension that she felt, for three or four days afterward, so sharp a pain in the same place on the foot that she was obliged to keep to her bed during that time.” The reason for this accident is therefore, according to my principle, that the spirits spread with force into the parts of our body that correspond to those that we see being wounded in others; and this, in order that, keeping them more taut, they render them more perceptible to our soul, and that it may be on its guard to avoid the evils we see happening to others.

This compassion in the bodies produces compassion in the minds. It excites us to relieve others, because in so doing we relieve ourselves. Finally, it checks our malice and our cruelty. For the horror of blood, the fear of death — in a word, the perceptible impression of compassion often prevents even those persons most persuaded that beasts are only machines from massacring them; because most men cannot kill them without wounding themselves by the backlash of compassion.

What must principally be noted here is that the sensible sight of the wound that a person receives produces in those who see it another wound all the greater the weaker and more delicate they are. Because this sensible sight, pushing the animal spirits with effort into the parts of the body that correspond to those that are seen being wounded, they make a greater impression in the fibers of a delicate body than in those of a strong and robust one.

Thus men who are full of strength and vigor are not wounded by the sight of some massacre, and they are not so much led to compassion because this sight shocks their body as because it shocks their reason. These persons have no compassion for criminals; they are inflexible and inexorable. But for women and children, they suffer much pain from the wounds they see others receive. They have mechanically much compassion for the wretched, and they cannot even see a beast beaten or hear it cry out without some uneasiness of mind.

For children still in their mother’s womb, the delicacy of the fibers of their flesh being infinitely greater than that of women and children, the course of the spirits must produce more considerable changes there, as will be seen later.

One will still regard what I have just said as a simple supposition, if one wishes; but one must try to understand it well, if one wishes to conceive distinctly the things I intend to explain in this chapter. For the two suppositions I have just made are the principles of an infinity of things that are ordinarily thought very difficult and very hidden, and that it seems to me indeed impossible to clarify without accepting these suppositions. Here are examples.

III. About seven or eight years ago, there was to be seen at the Incurables a young man who was born mad, and whose body was broken in the same places in which criminals are broken. He lived nearly twenty years in that state: several persons saw him, and the late queen mother, visiting that hospital, had the curiosity to see him and even to touch the arms and legs of this young man in the places where they were broken.

According to the principles I have just established, the cause of this fatal accident was that his mother, having learned that a criminal was about to be broken, went to see him executed. All the blows given to this wretch struck with force the imagination of this mother, and by a kind of backlash the tender and delicate brain of her child. The fibers of this woman’s brain were strangely shaken, and perhaps broken in some places, by the violent course of the spirits produced at the sight of so terrible an action, but they had enough consistency to prevent their entire upheaval. The fibers of the child’s brain, on the contrary, being unable to resist the torrent of these spirits, were entirely dissipated, and the ravage was great enough to make him lose his mind forever. That is the reason why he came into the world deprived of his senses. Here is the reason why he was broken in the same parts of the body as the criminal whom his mother had seen put to death.

At the sight of this execution so capable of frightening a woman, the violent course of the mother’s animal spirits went with force from her brain toward all the parts of her body that corresponded to those of the criminal, and the same thing occurred in the child. But because the mother’s bones were capable of resisting the violence of these spirits, they were not wounded by them. Perhaps she did not even feel the least pain nor the least trembling in her arms or legs when the criminal’s were being broken. But this rapid course of the spirits was capable of carrying away the soft and tender parts of the child’s bones. For bones are the last parts of the body to form, and they have very little consistency in children still in their mother’s womb. And it must be noted that if this mother had determined the movement of these spirits toward some other part of her body by tickling herself with force, her child would not have had broken bones; but the part that would have corresponded to that toward which the mother would have determined these spirits would have been greatly wounded, according to what I have already said.

The reasons for this accident are general for explaining how women who, during their pregnancy, see persons marked in certain parts of the face, imprint on their children the same marks, and in the same parts of the body; and one can judge from this that it is with reason that they are told to rub themselves on some hidden part of the body when they perceive something that surprises them and when they are agitated by some violent passion, for this can cause the marks to be traced rather on these hidden parts than on the faces of their children.

We would often have examples similar to the one we have just related, if children could live after receiving such great wounds; but ordinarily they are miscarriages. For one can say that nearly all the children who die in their mothers’ wombs, without the mothers being ill, have no other cause of their misfortune than terror, some ardent desire, or some other violent passion of their mothers. Here is another rather particular example.

Not a year ago, a woman, having considered with too much attention the painting of Saint Pius whose canonization feast was being celebrated, gave birth to a child who perfectly resembled the representation of that saint. He had the face of an old man, as much as a child without a beard can have. His arms were crossed on his chest, his eyes turned toward heaven, and he had very little forehead; because the image of this saint, being raised toward the vault of the church and looking toward heaven, also had almost no forehead. He had a kind of miter turned back over his shoulders, with several round marks in the places where miters are covered with jewels. In short, this child greatly resembled the painting upon which his mother had formed him by the force of her imagination. This is something that all Paris was able to see as well as I, because it was preserved for quite a long time in spirits of wine.

This example has this particular feature: that it was not the sight of a living man agitated by some passion that moved the spirits and the blood of the mother to produce so strange an effect, but only the sight of a painting; which was nevertheless very perceptible and accompanied by a great emotion of spirits, either by the ardor and application of the mother, or by the agitation that the noise of the celebration caused in her.

This mother therefore looking with application and with emotion of spirits at this painting, the child, according to the first supposition, saw it as she did with application and with emotion of spirits. The mother, being vividly struck by it, imitated it at least in posture, according to the second supposition; for her body being entirely formed and the fibers of her flesh hard enough to resist the course of the spirits, she could not imitate it or render herself like it in all things. But the fibers of the child’s flesh being extremely soft and consequently susceptible to all sorts of arrangements, the rapid course of the spirits produced in his flesh all that was necessary to render him entirely similar to the image he saw; and the imitation to which children are most disposed was almost as perfect as it could be. But this imitation, having given this child’s body too extraordinary a shape, caused his death.

There are many other examples of the force of mothers’ imaginations in the authors, and there is nothing so bizarre that they do not sometimes miscarry. For they not only make deformed children, but also fruits that they have wished to eat — apples, pears, bunches of grapes, and other similar things. Mothers imagining and ardently desiring to eat pears, for example, the children, if the fetus is animated, imagine and desire them likewise ardently; and (whether the fetus is or is not animated) the course of the spirits, excited by the image of the desired fruit, spreading into a small body very capable of changing shape because of its softness, these poor children become like the things they desire with too much ardor. But the mothers suffer no harm from it, because their body is not soft enough to take the shape of the bodies they imagine; thus they cannot imitate them or render themselves entirely like them.

Now one must not imagine that this correspondence that I have just explained, and which is sometimes the cause of such great disorders, is a useless or ill-ordered thing in nature. On the contrary, it seems very useful to the propagation of the human body or to the formation of the fetus, and it is absolutely necessary for the transmission of certain dispositions of the brain that must be different in different times and in different countries; for it is necessary, for example, that lambs in certain countries have their brains entirely disposed to flee wolves, because there are many of them in those places and they are greatly to be feared by them.

It is true that this communication of the mother’s brain with that of her child sometimes has bad consequences, when mothers let themselves be surprised by some violent passion. However, it seems to me that without this communication women and animals could not easily engender young of the same species. For although one can give some reason for the formation of the fetus in general, as Mr. Descartes attempted fairly successfully, nevertheless it is very difficult, without this communication of the mother’s brain with that of the child, to explain how a mare does not engender an ox, and a hen an egg that contains a small partridge or some bird of a new species; and I believe that those who have meditated on the formation of the fetus will be of this opinion.

It is true that the most reasonable thought, and the most conformable to experience, on this very difficult question of the formation of the fetus, is that children are already almost fully formed even before the act by which they are conceived, and that their mothers only give them the ordinary growth during the time of pregnancy. However, this communication of the animal spirits and the brain of the mother with the spirits and the brain of the child still seems to serve to regulate this growth and to determine the parts that serve for its nourishment to arrange themselves in roughly the same manner as in the mother’s body — that is to say, to render the child similar to the mother or of the same species as her. This appears sufficiently from the accidents that occur when the mother’s imagination becomes disordered and some violent passion changes the natural disposition of her brain; for then, as we have just explained, this communication changes the conformation of the child’s body, and the mothers sometimes miscarry fetuses all the more similar to the fruits they have desired as the spirits find less resistance in the fibers of the child’s body.

One does not deny, however, that God, without this communication of which we have spoken, could have disposed in so exact and regular a manner all the things necessary to the propagation of the species for infinite centuries, that mothers would never have miscarried and even would always have had children of the same size, the same color — in a word, such that one would have been taken for another; for we must not measure the power of God by our weak imagination, and we do not know the reasons He may have had in the construction of His work.

We see every day that without the aid of this communication plants and trees produce their like quite regularly, and that birds and many other animals do not need it to cause other young to grow and hatch when they brood eggs of a different species; as when a hen broods partridge eggs. For although one has reason to think that seeds and eggs already contain the plants and birds that come out of them, and that it may happen that the little bodies of these birds have received their conformation by the communication spoken of, and the plants theirs by means of another equivalent communication — nevertheless, this is perhaps guessing. But even if one did not guess, one must not judge altogether by the things that God has made what are those that He can make.

If one considers, however, that plants that receive their growth by the action of their mother resemble her much more than those that come from seed; that tulips, for example, that come from bulbs are of the same color as their mother, and that those that come from seed are almost always very different from it — one cannot doubt that if the communication of the mother with the fruit is not absolutely necessary for it to be of the same species, it is always necessary for that fruit to be entirely similar to her.

So that although God foresaw that this communication of the mother’s brain with that of her child would sometimes cause fetuses to die and monsters to be engendered, because of the disorder of the mother’s imagination — nevertheless, this communication is so admirable and so necessary for the reasons I have just stated, and for several others I could still add, that this knowledge that God had of these inconveniences should not have prevented Him from executing His design. One can say in a sense that God did not intend to make monsters, for it seems evident to me that if God made only one animal He would never make it monstrous. But having intended to produce an admirable work by the simplest ways and to bind all His creatures to one another, He foresaw certain effects that would necessarily follow from the order and nature of things, and this did not turn Him from His design. For in the end, although a monster alone is an imperfect work, nevertheless when it is joined with the rest of the creatures, it does not render the world imperfect or unworthy of the wisdom of the Creator.

We have sufficiently explained what a mother’s imagination can do upon the body of her child; let us now examine the power it has over his mind, and let us thus try to discover the first disorders of the mind and will of men in their origin, for that is our principal design.

IV. It is certain that the traces of the brain are accompanied by feelings and ideas of the soul, and that the emotions of the animal spirits do not occur in the body without there being in the soul movements that correspond to them; in a word, it is certain that all the passions and all the bodily feelings are accompanied by true feelings and true passions of the soul. Now, according to our first supposition, mothers communicate to their children the traces of their brain, and subsequently the movement of their animal spirits. Therefore they give rise in the minds of their children to the same passions and the same feelings by which they themselves are touched, and consequently they corrupt their heart and their reason in several ways.

If so many children bear on their faces marks or traces of the idea that struck their mother, although the fibers of the skin make much more resistance to the course of the spirits than the soft parts of the brain, and the spirits are much more agitated in the brain than toward the skin — one cannot reasonably doubt that the mother’s animal spirits produce in the brain of their children many traces of their disordered emotions. Now the great traces of the brain and the emotions of the spirits that correspond to them, being preserved for a long time and sometimes for life, it is evident that since there are hardly any women who do not have some weaknesses and who have not been moved by some passion during their pregnancy, there must be very few children who do not have their minds turned awry in something and who do not have some dominant passion.

We have only too many experiences of these things, and everyone knows well enough that there are entire families afflicted with great weaknesses of imagination that they have inherited from their parents; but it is not necessary to give particular examples here. On the contrary, it is more appropriate to assure, for the consolation of some persons, that these weaknesses of parents, not being natural or proper to the nature of man, the traces and vestiges of the brain that are the cause of them can be effaced with time.

One may, however, relate here the example of King James of England, mentioned by Sir Kenelm Digby in the book on the Powder of Sympathy that he gave to the public. He assures in that book that Mary Stuart, being pregnant with King James, some Scottish lords entered her chamber and killed her secretary, an Italian, in her presence, although she threw herself before them to prevent it; that this princess received some slight wounds there, and that the fright she had made such great impressions in her imagination that they were communicated to the child she carried in her womb: so that King James her son remained all his life unable to look at a naked sword. He says that he experienced this himself when he was knighted, for this prince, having to touch his shoulder with the sword, brought it straight to his face, and would even have wounded him if someone had not adroitly guided it where it should go. There are so many similar examples that it is useless to go looking for them in the authors. One does not believe that anyone will be found who contests these things; for in the end one sees a very great number of persons who cannot bear the sight of a rat, a mouse, a cat, a frog, and principally animals that crawl, like serpents and snakes, and who know no other cause for these extraordinary aversions than the fear their mothers had of these various animals during their pregnancy.

V. But what I chiefly wish to be noted is that there is every possible appearance that men still preserve today in their brain traces and impressions of their first parents. For just as animals produce their like and with similar vestiges in their brain, which are the cause that animals of the same species have the same sympathies and antipathies, and that they perform the same actions on the same occasions — so our first parents, after their sin, received in their brain such great vestiges and traces so deep, by the impression of sensible objects, that they may well have communicated them to their children. So that this great attachment that we already have from our mothers’ wombs to all sensible things, and this great distance from God in which we are in that state, could be explained in some manner by what we have just said.

For as it is necessary, according to the established order of nature, that the thoughts of the soul be conformable to the traces that are in the brain, one could say that as soon as we are formed in our mothers’ wombs, we are in sin and infected with the corruption of our parents, since from that time we are very strongly attached to the pleasures of our senses. Having in our brain traces similar to those of the persons who give us being, it is necessary that we also have the same thoughts and the same inclinations that relate to sensible objects.

Thus we must be born with concupiscence and with original sin. We must be born with concupiscence, if concupiscence is only the natural effort that the traces of the brain make upon the mind to attach it to sensible things; and we must be born in original sin, if original sin is nothing other than the reign of concupiscence and its efforts as victorious and as masters of the mind and heart of the child. Now there is great appearance that the reign of concupiscence, or the victory of concupiscence, is what is called original sin in children and actual sin in free men.

VI. It seems only that one could conclude from the principles I have just established a thing contrary to experience — namely, that the mother should always communicate to her child habits and inclinations similar to those she has, and the facility of imagining and learning the same things she knows; for all these things depend, as has been said, only on the traces and vestiges of the brain. Now, it is certain that the traces and vestiges of the mothers’ brain are communicated to children. This fact has been proved by the examples that have been related concerning men, and it is further confirmed by the example of animals, whose young have the brain filled with the same vestiges as those from which they came; which causes all those of the same species to have the same voice, the same manner of moving their limbs, and finally the same tricks for taking their prey and for defending themselves against their enemies. It should therefore follow from this that, since all the traces of the mothers are engraved and imprinted in the brain of the children, children should be born with the same habits and other qualities that their mothers have, and even ordinarily preserve them all their lives, since habits contracted from one’s tenderest youth are those that are preserved longest; which nevertheless is contrary to experience.

To answer this objection, one must know that there are two kinds of traces in the brain. Some are natural or proper to the nature of man; others are acquired. The natural ones are very deep and it is impossible to efface them altogether; the acquired ones, on the contrary, can be easily lost, because ordinarily they are not so deep. Now, although the natural and the acquired differ only in more or less, and often the former have less force than the latter, since animals are every day accustomed to do things entirely contrary to those to which they are led by these natural traces (for example, a dog is accustomed not to touch bread and not to run after a partridge that it sees and smells) — nevertheless, there is this difference between these traces: that the natural ones have, so to speak, secret alliances with the other parts of the body; for all the springs of our machine aid one another to preserve themselves in their natural state. All the parts of our body mutually contribute to all things necessary for the preservation or restoration of the natural traces. Thus they cannot be entirely effaced, and they begin to revive when one believes one has destroyed them.

On the contrary, acquired traces, although greater, deeper, and stronger than the natural ones, are lost little by little, if one does not take care to preserve them by the continual application of the causes that produced them; because the other parts of the body do not contribute at all to their preservation, and on the contrary work continually to efface and destroy them. One can compare these traces to ordinary wounds of the body; they are wounds that our brain has received, which close up of themselves like other wounds, by the admirable construction of the machine. If one made in the cheek an incision even larger than the mouth, this opening would close up little by little. But the opening of the mouth being natural, it can never be joined together. It is the same with the traces of the brain; the natural ones are not effaced, but the others heal with time. A truth whose consequences are infinite with respect to morality.

Since, therefore, there is nothing in the whole body that is not conformable to the natural traces, they are transmitted to children with all their force. Thus parrots produce young that have the same natural cries or songs that they themselves have. But because acquired traces are only in the brain and do not radiate into the rest of the body, except somewhat, as when they have been imprinted by the emotions that accompany violent passions, they must not be transmitted to children. Thus a parrot that says good morning and good evening to its master will not produce young as learned as itself, and learned and skillful persons will not have children who resemble them.

Thus, although it is true that everything that occurs in the mother’s brain also occurs at the same time in that of her child; that the mother can see nothing, feel nothing, imagine nothing that the child does not see, feel, and imagine; and finally that all the false traces of mothers corrupt the imagination of children — nevertheless, these traces not being natural in the sense we have just explained, one must not be astonished if they ordinarily close up as soon as the children have come out of their mother’s womb. For then the cause that formed these traces and maintained them no longer subsisting, the natural constitution of the whole body contributes to their destruction, and sensible objects produce other entirely new ones, very deep and in very great number, which efface almost all those that children had in their mother’s womb. For since it happens every day that a great pain causes one to forget those that preceded it, it is not possible that feelings as vivid as those of children, who receive for the first time the impression of objects on the delicate organs of their senses, should not efface most of the traces they had received from the same objects only by a kind of backlash, when they were as if sheltered in their mother’s womb.

However, when these traces are formed by a strong passion and accompanied by a very violent agitation of blood and spirits in the mother, they act with so much force on the child’s brain and on the rest of his body that they imprint there vestiges as deep and as durable as the natural traces: as in the example of Sir Kenelm Digby, in that of the child born mad and all broken, in the brain and in all the members of whom the mother’s imagination had produced such great ravages, and finally in the example of the general corruption of the nature of man.

And one must not be astonished if the children of the King of England did not have the same weakness as their father. First, because these sorts of traces are never imprinted so deeply in the rest of the body as the natural ones. Second, because the mother, not having the same weakness as the father, prevented it by her good constitution. And finally, because the mother acts infinitely more upon the child’s brain than the father, as is evident from what has been said.

But it must be noted that all these reasons, which show that the children of King James of England could not share in the weakness of their father, do nothing against the explanation of original sin or of this dominant inclination for sensible things, nor of this great distance from God that we derive from our parents; because the traces that sensible objects imprinted in the brain of the first men were very deep, were accompanied and augmented by violent passions, and were fortified by the continual use of sensible things necessary for the preservation of life — not only in Adam and Eve, but even, and this must be carefully noted, in the greatest saints, in all the men and all the women from whom we descend: so that there was nothing that could stop this corruption of nature. Thus, so far are these traces of our first fathers from being effaced little by little that on the contrary they must increase from day to day; and without the grace of Jesus Christ, which continually opposes this torrent, it would be absolutely true to say what a pagan poet said:

Ætas parentum pejor avis tulit Nos nequiores, mox daturos Progeniem vitiosiorem.

[The age of our parents, worse than that of our grandparents, has produced us, yet more wicked, who will soon give offspring still more depraved.]

For one must take good heed that the vestiges that awaken feelings of piety in the most holy mothers do not communicate any piety to the children they carry in their womb, and that on the contrary the traces that awaken the ideas of sensible things and are followed by passions never fail to communicate to children the feeling and love of sensible things.

A mother, for example, who is excited to the love of God by the movement of the spirits that accompanies the trace of the image of a venerable old man, because this mother has attached the idea of God to this trace of an old man; for, as we saw in the chapter on the connection of ideas, this can easily be done, although there is no relation between God and the image of an old man — this mother, I say, can produce in her child’s brain only the trace of an old man and an inclination for old men, which is not the love of God with which she was touched. For in the end there are no traces in the brain that can by themselves awaken other ideas than those of sensible things; because the body is not made to instruct the mind, and it speaks to the soul only for itself.

Thus a mother, whose brain is filled with traces that by their nature relate to sensible things, and which she cannot efface because concupiscence remains in her and her body is not subject to her, communicating them necessarily to her child, engenders a sinner although she is just. This mother is just, because, actually loving or having loved God by a love of choice, this concupiscence does not render her criminal, although she follows its movements in sleep. But the child she engenders, not having loved God by a love of choice, and his heart not having been turned toward God, it is evident that he is in disorder and irregularity, and that there is nothing in him that is not worthy of the wrath of God.

But when they have been regenerated by baptism and have been justified — either by a disposition of the heart similar to that which remains in the just during the illusions of the night, or perhaps by a free act of love of God that they performed being delivered for a few moments from the domination of the body by the force of the sacrament; for as God made them to love Him, one cannot conceive that they are actually in justice and in the order of God if they do not love Him or have not loved Him, or at least if their heart is not disposed in the same manner as it would be if they had actually loved Him — then, although they obey concupiscence during their childhood, their concupiscence is no longer sin; it no longer renders them guilty and worthy of wrath; they do not cease to be just and agreeable to God, for the same reason that one does not lose grace, although one follows in sleep the movements of concupiscence; for children have brains so soft, and they receive such vivid and strong impressions from the simplest objects, that they do not have enough freedom of mind to resist them. But I have stopped too long on things that are not entirely within the subject I am treating. It is enough that I can conclude here from what I have just explained in this chapter, that all these false traces that mothers imprint in the brain of their children render their minds false, and corrupt their imagination; and that thus most men are subject to imagine things otherwise than they are, by giving some false color and some irregular feature to the ideas of the things they perceive. If one wishes to be more thoroughly enlightened as to what I think about original sin and the manner in which I believe it is transmitted to children, one can read all at once the clarification that corresponds to this chapter.