The Conduct Unit 103 



course, in proportion to independence of action, but even 

 that is not separate, the consequences of it will be shared by 

 the parent. When a child suffers sickness or injury, even as 

 a result of its own act, the parent suffers, not merely mental 

 or sympathetic suffering, as when a neighbor is injured, but 

 actual physical loss. The death of a child is a real loss, 

 harder than the loss of a hand or a foot or a limb, it is a loss 

 of so much flesh and blood that lately lived and was part 

 of the parent. This material relation is made more clear as 

 the machinery of evolution is studied. It is part of the foun- 

 dation of the joint responsibility of parent and child. Now 

 when does that joint responsibility cease? For how long 

 are parent and offspring linked in conduct? When do they 

 become independent? If the parents' responsibility ceases 

 at some time, such as at the child's maturity, or at the 

 parents' senility or death, does not even then the child's 

 responsibility continue the same line of activities with the 

 account still unbalanced? In other words, is not each indi- 

 vidual answerable indefinitely, for things done by his parents 

 and ancestors, even after they are gone? Visibly and posi- 

 tively he is. If a parent should evade duties, the consequence 

 of that evasion falls upon the offspring. Every man and 

 woman, every animal alive, stands alive by virtue of the 

 success of a line of ancestors; and enjoys what he has of 

 life, strength, stature, beauty, health, reason, wisdom, and 

 all of it; by their deeds, as qualified by their misdeeds and 

 omissions, which lessen the benefits transmitted. But even 

 if he has but a minimum of these things; only enough to be 

 barely alive; he is indebted for that, and is responsible for 

 it, until in turn he relinquishes it and some of his descent 



