own defections; they acquit themselves
of any responsibility for what is before their eyes.

=Hospitals cited.=--Our hospitals for abnormal and subnormal children,
and our eleemosynary institutions, in general, are a sad commentary upon
our civilization and something of a reflection upon the school as an
exponent of and a teacher of life. If the wards of these institutions,
barring the victims of accidents, are the best we can do in the way of
coming upon a solution of the problem of life, neither society nor the
school has any special warrant for exultation. These defectives did not
just happen. The law of life is neither fortuitous nor capricious. On
the contrary, like begets like, and the law is immutable. With lavish
hand, society provides the pound of cure but gives only superficial
consideration to the ounce of prevention. The title of education will be
cloudy until such time as these institutions have become a thing of the
past. Both pulpit and press extol the efforts of society to build,
equip, and maintain these institutions, and that is well; but, with all
that, we are merely trying to make the best of a bad situation.
Education will not fully come into its own until it takes into the scope
of its interests the child of the future as well as the child of the
present; not until it comes to regard the children of the present as
future ancestors as well as future citizens.

=The child as a future ancestor.=--If the children of the future are to
prove a blessing to society and not a burden, then the children of the
present need to become fully conscious of their responsibilities as
agencies in bringing to pass this desirable condition. If the teacher or
parent can, somehow, cause the boy of to-day to visualize his own
grandson, in the years to come, pointing the finger of scorn at him and
calling down maledictions upon him because of a taint in the family
blood, that picture will persist in his consciousness, and will prove a
deterrent factor in his life. The desire for immortality is innate in
every human breast, we are taught, but certainly no boy will wish to
achieve that sort of immortality. He will not consider with complacency
the possibility of his becoming a pariah in the estimation of his
descendants, and will go far in an effort to avert such a misfortune.
There is no man but will shudder when he contemplates the possibility of
having perpetuated upon his gravestone or in the memory of his
grandchild th