104 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 



independently acquired by the child. It would be 

 strange injustice that God had put us under the 

 operation of a law by which we could inherit the 

 sins of our parents, but could not inherit their 

 virtues.* 



The persistence of a similar environment 

 through several generations may produce the 

 semblance of heredity without ever establishing 

 it in the least degree. "The Alpine plants which 

 Naegeli transferred to a southern garden were 

 changed by their new surroundings; their de- 

 scendants were likewise changed, and the new 



*"A11 will admit this kind of inheritance, There is no trouble in regard to char- 

 acteristics that are evil. All admit this kind of inheritance. 'Like begets like.' The 

 books are full of it. Adam sinned and begat a child in his own sinful likeness. All 

 other Adams have done the same thing. Here heredity serves a good purpose. It fur- 

 nishes a foundation for all our theologies and theodicies. . . . Has God made it pos- 

 sible for us to inherit irreligion, or an evil nature, and not made it possible for us to in- 

 herit religion, or a good nature? If so, then why did He make us creatures of inheritance 

 at all? Would a wise and good God place in our natures a law that becomes effective 

 only when, and as soon as, we become evil? Would it not have been better to have 

 left this law out altogether?" (Robins: "The Family," 142, 143.) 



The possibility that this latter question might have an affirmative reply did not seem 

 to have entered the mind of this author. His argument cuts the ground from under- 

 neath himself as well as from underneath those whom he combats. Science says that 

 neither virtues nor vices, as moral qualities, are hereditable, and hence God is vindi- 

 cated as thoroughly as in his conclusion that both are transmissible. But from his point 

 of view, that of the heritage of original sin, his argument is very effective. 



This author, and doubtless many others, base their belief upon Exod. 20: 5, 34: 7; 

 Num. 14: 18, in which it is said that God visits "the iniquity of the fathers upon the 

 children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation." They take this as a state- 

 ment of the law of heredity. Such, however, it is not. It is a social law, and in the 

 form in which it was practiced in that period of society is indefensible to-day. It will 

 be noticed that it is not a law of heredity, which would never run out in its influences, 

 but it covers just generations enough to comprehend those who might at the time be 

 living with the father-criminal at the time of the commission of his crime. It is not 

 hereditary in its character: for it does not specifically apply to those who are to be born 

 after the commission of the crime, but to those who may be already living with the sin- 

 ner, and presumably participants in his deed, or sympathetic with it afterwards. The 

 commentary on this law is the cases where sinners were punished with their wife or 

 wives, their children and relatives, and even their cattle. It in no sense is an anticipa- 

 tion of the modern law of heredity by which the very physical stock of a man is degen- 

 erated by some race poison, and its effects handed down to his posterity forever 



