HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 87 



street to beget the character of their child, to 

 whom they have given only a physical structure. 

 If this be an allowable conception of spiritual 

 heredity, then a child is greatly wronged whose 

 parents do not give themselves vitally to him. 

 They must allow the arteries of spiritual life to 

 pump into his forming being that character which 

 he has a right to inherit from them. The child 

 that is brought up by nurses instead of by a 

 mother is the spiritual offspring of the nurse 

 rather than of the mother, and will be more in- 

 debted for character to the nurse than to its own 

 mother. Nothing saves such a transaction from 

 being a tragedy except the not unprecedented fact 

 that the character of the nurse is often more noble 

 than that of the mother. That mother is mistaken 

 who assumes that in giving her child fleshly birth 

 she has given him a spiritual being, which now 

 she may have cultivated by a hired servant. Noth- 

 ing but daily, living contact with herself will im- 

 part her own self to him. If separation from the 

 parents is complete, the spiritual heritage from 

 them will be insignificant. A spiritual heritage 

 for our children can not be purchased with money ; 

 it must be drawn from us by living processes. A 

 child is not indebted to his mother's milk so much 

 for his character as he is to his mother's hope, 

 courage, faith. "Children have certain inalien- 

 able rights which fatherhood and motherhood 

 must recognize. They have a right to stand first 

 in the affections, the interest, and the endeavor 



