y 10 who showed |
during the whole of life a |
normal disposition and development |
of body and mind. |

If it were not a fact that health, purity, integrity, intellect and
virtue were being transmitted to a far greater extent than sin and vice,
there would be little good in the world, but the transmission of these
good qualities is so extended, so like the air and the sunshine and the
water, a common thing, that we almost forget to recognize it. When we
turn our thoughts to the investigation of this phase of the subject, we
find that vigorous parents have healthful children, that powers of
intellect are transmitted, and that honesty and uprightness in the
father warrants us in expecting the same in the son. We recognize the
transmission of powers of intellect in the fact that where the parents
have a peculiar talent, we very generally find the same talent in their
children. We are acquainted with musical families, mathematical
families, artistic families, and in the study of renowned people of the
world we find evidences of this transmission of intellect. We also learn
that the effects of education are transmissible, and if the parents are
educated along a certain line the children receive education along that
line much more readily. This fact becomes a wonderful incentive to us to
build up all that is best in our own natures in order that through us
the world may receive an impetus towards higher and better things.

Sometimes when your faults and defects press upon you with tremendous
force and you find it so very hard to overcome them, you may be tempted
to lay the blame on your ancestry who gave you such a dower, who by
their lives handicapped you in your life-struggle. You may feel inclined
to say with some writer, to me unknown, who says:

HEREDITY.

"Your strictures are unmerited,
Our follies are inherited,
Directly from our gran-pas they all came;
Our defects have been transmitted,
And we should be acquitted
Of all responsibility and blame.

We are not depraved beginners,
But hereditary sinners,
For our fathers never acted as they should;
'Tis the folly of our gran-pas
That continually hampers--
What a pity that our gran-pas weren't good!

Yes, we'd all be reverend senators,
If our depraved progenitors
Had all been prudent, studious and wise;
But they were quite terrestial,
Or we