THE DESCENT OF BAD TRAITS AND GOOD. 265 



my side ; you will find the better part of poetiy on 

 my side. Of what have the best singers loved to 

 tell us oftenest, if it be not of the first supreme affec- 

 tion ? Where is there any thing so hallowed, inside 

 the whole range of secular discussion, as this un- 

 speakable theme ? God grant that the spirit of our 

 German fathers, who found, according to Tacitus, 

 something celestial in woman, who revered her re- 

 sponses, and buried the adulterer alive in the mud, 

 and whipped the adulteress through the streets, may 

 be the permanent principle of our Anglo-Saxon civil- 

 ization ! for, if it be not, I foresee only the fate of 

 Rome for the sins of Rome, only the fate of Sardan- 

 apalus for the sins of Sardanapalus. The vengeance 

 of decay has seized upon every nation that has 

 violated these subtile laws. Hereditary descent itself 

 becomes a consuming curse to every luxurious age 

 that loses its purity or falls into such callousness that 

 it cannot discern God's touch in these supreme nat- 

 ural indications of his will. [Applause.] 



8. Even were the marriage of highly-gifted per- 

 sons of different lines of descent to be made the 

 custom of civilization, there would yet remain in the 

 lower portion of the race a majority of beings of 

 inferior minds of which heredity would perpetuate 

 the deficiencies. (Ribot, Heredity, American edition, 

 pp. 289-300.) 



Men talk superficially of this theme who suppose 

 that it is a simple one, and that, if we could make 

 arrangements to suit ourselves, the average ability of 

 the race might easily V lifted to twice its present 



