gence entails serious
deprivation--are not these thwartings, we ask, signs of a terrible lack
of sympathy? The truth is, that the difficulties of moral education are
necessarily of dual origin--necessarily result from the combined faults
of parents and children. If hereditary transmission is a law of nature,
as every naturalist knows it to be, and as our daily remarks and current
proverbs admit it to be; then, on the average of cases, the defects of
children mirror the defects of their parents;--on the average of cases,
we say, because, complicated as the results are by the transmitted
traits of remoter ancestors, the correspondence is not special but only
general. And if, on the average of cases, this inheritance of defects
exists, then the evil passions which parents have to check in their
children, imply like evil passions in themselves: hidden, it may be,
from the public eye, or perhaps obscured by other feelings, but still
there. Evidently, therefore, the general practice of any ideal system of
discipline is hopeless: parents are not good enough.

Moreover, even were there methods by which the desired end could be at
once effected; and even had fathers and mothers sufficient insight,
sympathy, and self-command to employ these methods consistently; it
might still be contended that it would be of no use to reform
family-government faster than other things are reformed. What is it that
we aim to do? Is it not that education of whatever kind has for its
proximate end to prepare a child for the business of life--to produce a
citizen who, while he is well conducted, is also able to make his way in
the world? And does not making his way in the world (by which we mean,
not the acquirement of wealth, but of the funds requisite for bringing
up a family)--does not this imply a certain fitness for the world as it
now is? And if by any system of culture an ideal human being could be
produced, is it not doubtful whether he would be fit for the world as it
now is? May we not, on the contrary, suspect that his too keen sense of
rectitude, and too elevated standard of conduct, would make life
intolerable or even impossible? And however admirable the result might
be, considered individually, would it not be self-defeating in so far as
society and posterity are concerned? There is much reason for thinking
that as in a nation so in a family, the kind of government is, on the
whole, about as good as the general state of human nature per