The Blood of the Nation 



stream of heredity. The child of each 

 generation is free-born so far as hered- 

 ity goes, and the sins of the fathers 

 are not visited upon him. If vice 

 Btrikes deeply enough to wreck the 

 man, it is likely to wreck or kill the 

 child as well, not through heredity, but 

 through lack of nutrition. The child 

 depends on its parents for its early 

 vitality, its constitutional strength, the 

 momentum of its life, if we may use the 

 term. For this a sound parentage 

 demands a sound body. The unsound 

 parentage yields the withered branches, 

 the lineage which speedily comes to the 

 end. But this class of influences, af- 

 fecting not the germ-plasm, but general 

 vitality, has no relation to hereditary 

 qualities, so far as we know. 

 * In heredity there can be no tendency 

 downward or upward. Nature repeats, 

 and that is all. From the actual par- 

 ents actual qualities are received, the 



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