40 HEREDITY. 



to recommend them. Schools and colleges do not 

 make great men, except of those who have native 

 genius. Men of mediocrity are failures without 

 education, yet succeed with it. Genius may suc- 

 ceed without the schools; but certainly it can 

 do much better with them. Too much cannot be 

 said in favor of thorough schooling and mental 

 discipline ; yet as between heredity and education, 

 the public places far too much stress upon the 

 relative value of education, heredity fixes__the 

 natural bent of a mind and its rudimentary pos- 

 sibilities; education directs, develops and matures 

 the inherited powers; the two determine the men- 

 tality and possibilities of the man. 



Tendencies toward good or evil are inborn. 

 Moral conduct, vice and virtue, like intellectual 

 endcnaeS P ower are tne resu lt of several factors, some of 



which are prenatal others are postnatal. We are 

 inclined to expect a man to be good or bad, hon- 

 est or dishonest according to his early home influ- 

 ences and his spiritual awakening. That these 

 are great factors in the formation of every char- 

 acter is true, but the hereditary tendencies toward 

 good and evil are also highly potential. The 

 honest, inmost prayer of the rnass of intelligent, 

 erring humanity to-day is not for more knowl- 

 edge of what is right nor for deliverance from 

 bad environments, but for the strength and grace 

 to overcome their own innate, selfish tendencies 

 or vicious desires. 



Another objection to heredity closely allied to 

 1 the one we have just been considering is that 

 Responsibility, the recognition of good and evil tendencies as 

 being inborn destroys the sense of moral respon- 



