286 HEREDITY. 



Providence partial to Marcus Aurelius? To the 

 third and fourth generations bad traits go down. 

 To the third and fourth generations good traits go 

 down. These are facts. What does Providence 

 mean by them ? 



There are the seven laws of hereditary descent. 

 It turns out that a good initial heredity may pro- 

 duce virtue in the descendant by predisposition 

 merely from a temporarily ennobled nature, although 

 there was in general vice in the parents ; and so a 

 bad direct heredity. The apparent injustice of Prov- 

 idence is mitigated by this seventh law. If you are 

 in a lofty mood, Providence is on your side; but 

 when a drunkard, on the one hand, or when, on the 

 other, a man generally temperate, but in a temporary 

 debauch, places himself under the power of these laws 

 of heredity, that seventh principle acts just as surely 

 to produce an inheritance of evil as it does in the 

 opposite case to produce an inheritance of good. 

 Have you not known some idiot born in an able 

 family ? I know one who all his life goes about con- 

 gratulating his friends, " Good-morning, sir ; " "A 

 fine day, sir." Nobody, without similar experience, 

 can measure the long reaches of the knives that 

 must pass up and down in the soul of the father 

 of that idiot, for he was one of the ablest men of the 

 commonwealth in which he lived ; but he was tem- 

 porarily a drunkard, and God cursed him through 

 that law of initial heredity. Have you not known 

 children more highly gifted than their parents, or in- 

 heriting the excellences of one or both in a higher 



