36 



HEREDITY AND CHRISTIAN PROBLEMS 



Dr. Moore says : " Our education may be said 

 to begin with our forefathers. The child of the 

 morally instructed is most capable of instruction, 

 and intellectual excellence is generally the result 

 of ages of mental cultivation. 



" Sir A. Carlisle says that many years since an 

 old schoolmaster told him that, in the course of 

 his personal experience, he had observed a re- 

 markable difference in the capacities of children 

 for learning, which was connected with the educa- 

 tion and aptitude of their parents ; that the chil- 

 dren of people accustomed to arithmetic learned 

 figures quicker than those of differently edu- 

 cated persons ; while the children of classical 

 scholars more easily learned Latin and Greek ; 

 and that, notwithstanding a few striking excep- 

 tions, the natural dulness of children born of 

 uneducated parents was proverbial." ^ "I think," 

 says a careful observer, " the hereditary powers 

 will generally be found best calculated to do that 

 which the parents, through successive generations, 

 have done." ^ 



The investigations of biologists have been de- 

 voted to physiological rather than to psychological 

 phenomena; but another class of investigators 



^ A Physician''s Problems, Elam, pp. 32, 33. 

 2 Ibid. p. 33. 



