HEREDITY. 15 



by Nature with a certain fixed mental potentiality of 

 uniform character. But now that observation reveals 

 more and more clearly every day how much the capacity 

 and character, mental and bodily, of the individual is 

 dependent upon his ancestral antecedents, it is impos- 

 sible to deny that a man may suffer irremediable ill 

 through the misfortune of a bad descent. Each one is 

 a link in the chain of organic beings, a physical con- 

 sequent of physical antecedents; the idiot is not an 

 accident, nor the irreclaimable criminal an unaccount- 

 able causality." * 



As I have said before, men and women must be 

 made to understand that this law of hereditary trans- 

 mission of health and disease, both mental and physical, 

 applies equally to all Nature's creatures, and that if the 

 race is to be improved, it must be done on exactly the 

 same lines as are followed in the world of inferior 

 animals, viz., to cultivate the good, modify and improve 

 the indifferent, and let the absolutely bad die out. 

 "Like father, like son," is an old saying and a true 

 one. Heredity is a law from which there is no escap- 

 ing. Our bodily and mental development, as received 

 from our ancestors and modified for better or worse 

 by ourselves, is a certain heritage for our children. 

 As we improve our condition mentally or bodily, so 

 will our posterity be gainers, and as we degrade our 

 natures, so shall our children suffer degradation. Like 

 begets like, and whether the particular bent in the 

 parent be for good or evil, toward health or disease of 

 * "Physiology and Pathology of the Mind," by H. Maudsley, M.D. 



