nsible for the cultivation of our intellects, for the development
of inherited virtues, and the annihilation of inherited vices.

If you study your characteristics and talents you find that they repeat
those of your ancestry. Your eyes, hair, mouth, chin, your stature,
figure, complexion, your talents, capabilities, tendencies, your likes
and dislikes, your faults as well as your virtues are repetitions of
those who preceded you in this living network of existence of which you
form a part. If you are not like father or mother you may be like
grandfather or great-grandmother. If you do not find yourself repeating
the characteristics or personality of any one ancestor, you may find
yourself a composite photograph of several. And even if you cannot trace
in yourself a likeness to any family representative, you may still be
assured that from some of them your traits have come to you. You have
only to recall the complexity of your sources of inheritance and then
remember how many words can be spelled from the twenty-six letters of
the alphabet to see that you can hardly measure the peculiar forces of
mind and body that may come to you though that power of transmission
which we call heredity.

It may occur to you to ask why, if we are not responsible for our
inheritances, is it needful to give them any particular thought? There
are two reasons why we should consider the good and bad characteristics
which may be ours through inheritance. In the first place, heredity is
not fatality, and we are not absolutely obliged to follow the paths
which our ancestors marked out for us, and in the second place, we can,
by understanding our own characters, mark out better paths for our
posterity. We are not only receivers of life, but we may be also givers
of life, and this is the gift that comes to you at the entrance to the
Land of the Teens. Can you imagine a more important period in the life
of an individual than that point where is intrusted to him the physical
powers which make him the arbiter of the destiny of those who come after
him?

The gift of possible life for others is even more marvelous than that of
actual life for one's self and brings with it greater responsibility. It
is accompanied with marked physical changes. You have observed them in
yourself, though you perhaps have not understood them. Up to this time
you have been but a child, and all your physical forces have been
occupied in keeping you alive and growing. But y