" THOUGHTS ON PHYSICAL EDUCATION." 93 



or benefit it in its health, vigour, and fitness for action. This is 

 Dr. C's position ; and, according to him, the first and most import- 

 ant element of physical education is to procure, for those to be edu- 

 cated, a constitution of body originally sound. For attaining this end, 

 the soundness of parents is necessary ; because it is a law of nature, 

 that constitutional qualities are hereditary and transmissible from 

 parents to their progeny, in man and animals. That the descend- 

 ants of a community, sound, and vigorous, and hardy, in mind and 

 body, will be themselves a community of the same description, un- 

 less they are changed by adventitious causes, is a general rule to 

 which neither does history contain, nor can observation adduce, a 

 single exception. This principle is extensively and power- 

 fully operative on the standing and welfare of the human 

 race : it is the reason why children, born at different periods 

 of the lives of their parents, and under the influence of diffe- 

 rent circumstances, especially different degrees of parental health 

 and vigour, are often so unlike each other : and it is also the 

 probable source of the very frequent strong resemblance of twins 

 who receive the impress of the same parental condition. The first- 

 born children of parents who marry when very young, are rarely 

 equal, either in body or intellect, to those born afterwards, provided 

 the parents continue healthy. Dr. C. explains this occurrence by 

 stating that very young parents are immature and comparatively 

 feeble in constitution ; that their constitutional imperfection descends 

 to their early offspring ; but that, as years pass on, their being 

 ripens and their strength increases ; and that, as a natural effect of 

 this, the constitutions of their children become ameliorated. During 

 early life, the animal faculties and their organs predominate : pa- 

 rents, therefore, who marry at this period, communicate in a higher 

 degree to their children the same unfortunate predominance which 

 renders them less intellectual and moral, and more sensual — less 

 capable, as well as less ambitious, of pre-eminence in knowledge and 

 virtue, and more inclined to animal indulgences. 



Dr. C. refers to history and observation for a confirmation of this 

 doctrine, and to philosophy for its exposition. He advises, as a 

 means toward the improvement of our race, the prohibition or aban- 

 donment of too early marriages : before the parties form a compact 

 fraught with consequences so infinitely weighty, let the constitu- 

 tion of both be matured. They will then, he says, not only trans- 

 mit to their progeny a better organization, but be themselves, from 

 the knowledge and experience they have attained, better prepared 

 to improve it by cultivation. Patriotism, philanthrophy, and every 



