he
rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted. And
Jacob did separate the lambs, and set the faces of the flocks towards
the ringstraked and all the brown in the flock of Laban; and he put his
own flocks by themselves, and put them not unto Laban's cattle. And it
came to pass, whenever the stronger cattle did conceive, that Jacob laid
the rods before the eyes of the cattle in the gutters, that they might
conceive among the rods. But when the cattle were feeble, he put them
not in: so the feebler were Laban's, and the stronger Jacob's.'

The impressions conveyed to the brain through the sense of sight are
here asserted by the writer of Genesis to have influenced the system of
the ewes so that they brought forth young marked in the same manner as
the rods placed before their eyes. It is not said that there was any
miraculous interposition; but the whole account is given as if it were
an everyday, natural, and well-known occurrence.

The Greeks, a people renowned for their physical beauty, seemed to be
aware of the value of mental impressions; for in their apartments they
were lavish of statues and paintings representing the gods and
goddesses, delineated in accordance with the best models of art.

Dionysus, tyrant of Syracuse, caused the portrait of the beautiful Jason
to be suspended before the nuptial bed, in order to obtain a handsome
child.

The following is related of the celebrated Galen:--A Roman magistrate,
little, ugly, and hunch-backed, had by his wife a child exactly
resembling the statue of AEsop. Frightened at the sight of this little
monster, and fearful of becoming the father of a posterity so deformed,
he went to consult Galen, the most distinguished physician of his time,
who counseled him to place three statues of love around the conjugal
bed, one at the foot, the others, one on each side, in order that the
eyes of his young spouse might be constantly feasted on these charming
figures. The magistrate followed strictly the advice of the physician,
and it is recorded that his wife bore him a child surpassing in beauty
all his hopes.

The fact that the attributes of the child are determined to an important
extent by the bodily and mental condition of the parents at the time of
conception, explains the marked difference almost constantly observed
between children born to the same parents, however strong the family
likeness may be among them. The changes constantly going on in the