242 HEREDITY. 



But when the Supreme Power sees that no chance 

 is improved, then it allows the laws of heredity to 

 shut down upon the transgressors, and they are re- 

 moved from the earth. 



What good does that riddance or removal do ? It 

 has been justly said that the ages are kept from being 

 insane by the cradles and by death. If we could not 

 get rid of disordered human organizations, what 

 would happen to the centuries? Oliver Wendell 

 Holmes remarks that most people think that any 

 difficulty of a physical sort can be cured if a phy- 

 sician is called early enough. "Yes," he replies, 

 "but early enough would commonly be two hundred 

 years in advance." Concerning the terrific earnest- 

 ness of Nature, it is certain that she means well, even 

 in her severities, and that we must treat her as we 

 would a kind commonwealth. 



There is one service that the Supreme Powers are 

 willing to do for us, and which I have not supposed 

 human power to endeavor to effect in a parallel case. 

 The Supreme Powers have a law, of the existence of 

 which we have seen the proof here, that, whenever a 

 man submits himself utterly to that divine force in 

 him which we call conscience, a new set of affections 

 shall be given him by a re-arrangement of his nature. 

 A light will stream in through dome windows which 

 before were curtained. There will come into the 

 depths of his life a quickening and transforming 

 power, utterly unobtainable except by total self-sur- 

 render to conscience. The worst case of sane hered- 

 ity is no exception to this law. Take a man who is 



