222 Medicine : 



From that which is evil what good can come ? 

 In the moral as in the physical world, the present 

 is the natural product of the past and the deter- 

 minant of the future. Moral deterioration in the 

 parent is pretty sure to be visited somehow upon 

 the mental constitution of the children and the 

 children's children ; for grapes do not grow on 

 thorns in the moral any more than in the vege- 

 table world ; and it is, I believe, the moral 

 or affective, not the intellectual, nature — the tone 

 of feeling infused into the forming germ — which 

 counts most in human heredity. If that be 

 a lesson which medical research will some day 

 demonstrate scientifically, one can heartily endorse 

 the saying of Descartes, who was well versed in 

 the physiology of his time and was himself a 

 diligent dissector, that if mankind is to be per- 

 fected, the means of perfecting it must be sought 

 in the medical sciences. For my part I cannot 

 doubt that a positive science of human nature, as 

 it gradually emerges into form, will make it ever 

 more and more plain that, by operation of natural 

 law in the process of organic evolution, sound 

 thought, good moral feeling, and devotion to a 

 high ideal, are the solid foundation of health and 

 wealth of mind in individuals, in families, and 

 through families in nations ; that there was, 

 indeed, a measure of scientific truth in the saying 

 of the Hebrew seer, who, looking on the genera- 

 tions of old, declared that those who sow upon 

 the furrows of unrighteousness shall reap them 

 sevenfold. 



