SEVEN PRINCIPAL LAWS OF HEREDITY. 241 



the sake of health. He makes them to be like ob- 

 stacles laid down in the path of a child learning to 

 walk. A little clambering is an education. 



If, after all their allurement of promise and their 

 threat of doom, there is at last no hope of reform, 

 what do the laws of hereditary descent do ? They 

 put an end to the earthly existence of the trans- 

 gressor. When I meditate on the severity of the 

 laws of hereditary descent, I am relieved by remem- 

 bering that the earthly career of vice is short. Be- 

 fore the eyes of exact observation in this world, the 

 thoroughly vicious family is at last burned up. So 

 much we know beyond a peradventure as to the fires 

 of the universe. One of the greatest curses pro- 

 nounced alike by the Scriptures and natural law upon 

 evil is that it shall have no name long in the earth. 



You say that often evil dispositions are inherited 

 through many generations. Sometimes people who 

 are half vicious and half virtuous, if such expressions 

 may be allowed, puzzle the world in families that live 

 century after century. Yes ; in spite of the severity 

 of the laws of hereditary descent, God gives every 

 half-breed a chance. He suffers long with a man 

 who has received burdens out of the ancestral spaces, 

 and comes weighted into life. He gives him an op- 

 portunity, and puts by his side these laws of hered- 

 ity, reversional, collateral, pre-marital, pre-natal, and 

 initial. Direct heredity does not choke him. Five 

 other laws of heredity stand by him, if natural law is 

 obeyed. Every human being has all the chances 

 represented by the seven laws of hereditary descent. 



