V 



I 



178 THE CHILD AND HEREDITY 



towards its own children is thus measured by the amount 

 of virtue and wisdom which it shows in its own customary 

 conduct. 1 It cannot improve them except by improving 

 itself ; and the building up of the moral cosmos is a slow 

 process. But that a community should spend its care upon 

 bringing what is best within it to bear upon the opening 

 powers of its children, even taking upon itself the respon- 

 sibilities and privileges of parentage when the natural 

 parent by his own vice and folly has abdicated them ; that 

 it should venture far more for the sake of the young, 

 risking much in order to educate them into virtue, is an 

 indisputable condition of its welfare. Compared with 

 this every other task that reformers and legislators can 

 undertake sinks into insignificance : so rich is the innate 

 inheritance of the child, and so dependent is his possession 

 of it upon those into whose hands his life falls. 



1 New educational schemes, to the invention of which we are so much 

 given, can of themselves do little far less than is ordinarily expected. 

 Example is the only real teacher of morals^ 



