Woman's Opportunity
he greatest opportunity
to better the
world can come to any woman
is through the experience of
maternity.
The power of prenatal influence
which a mother possesses is awe-
inspiring to realize.
It has been said upon excellent authority that
Napoleon's mother read Roman history with
absorbing interest during the months preceding
his birth.
Think of the nations and the centuries influ-
enced by that one woman's mental concentration!
The geography of the world was changed by her
power of focused thought.
In all probability Napoleon's mother did not
know what she was doing; she was not conscious
of the destiny her mind was shaping for her
unborn child, nor of the law governing such
conditions.
Women have been strangely ignorant of this
vital truth; until recent years it has not been
considered a "proper" theme for tongue or pen,
and to-day the great majority of young women
marry absolutely uninformed upon the subject of
prenatal influence.
Men are equally oblivious of any knowledge
regarding the matter, and consequently make no
special effort to keep the expectant mother of
their offspring happy, hopeful, or free of anxiety
and worry during this period. Often they do not
strive to aid them in their own attempts to
bestow a desirable temperament upon the unborn
child, but heedlessly and needlessly aggravate or
grieve the mind which is stamping its impress
upon an unborn soul.
It is just here that the "New Thought" can
perform its greatest miracles of good.
Even the woman who has not been enlight-
ened upon the law of ante-birth-influence will,
if a true disciple of the Religion of Right-living,
bring healthy and helpful children into the
world, because her normal state of mind will be
inclusive of those three qualities; and her contin-
ued and repeated assertions of her own divine
nature will shape the brain of her child in opti-
mistic and reverential mould.
There is the old law of the continual falling
of the drop of water upon the stone to be verified
in the spiritual plane. Continual assertions of a
mother that her child will be all that she desires
it to be, will wear away the stone of inherited
tendencies, and bring into physical being a mal-
leable nature wholly amenable to the after influ-
ences and efforts she may bring to bear upon it.
It is a tremendous responsibility which rests
upon the woman who knows she is to be a mother
of a human being.
A hundred ancestors may have contributed
certain qualities to that invisible and formless
atom which contains an immortal soul, yet the
mother's mind has the power to remake and
rebuild all those characteristics, and to place over
them her own dominating impulse, whether for
good or ill.
Surely, if success in the arts or the sciences is
worthy of years of devoted attention and inter-
ested effort, the moulding of a noble human
being is worth eight or nine months of concen-
trated thought and unflagging zeal of purpose.
Every expectant mother should set herself
about the important business God has entrusted
her with, unafraid, and confident of her divine
mission. She should direct her mind into whole-
some and optimistic channels; she should read
inspiring books and think loving and large
thoughts. She should pray and aspire! and
always should she carry in her mind the ideal of
the child she would mother, and command from
the great Source of all Opulence the qualities
she would desire to perpetuate.
And they will be given.
The Heart of the New Thought by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
Chicago : The Psychic Research Company, c1902.
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