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ment. Heredity is the condition within the body, and environment 

 consists of the influences that act upon it from tvithout. To properly 

 adjust these two factors is the rationale of individual development 

 aijd organic evolution. To balance some tmvard evil with some 

 purer influence acting from without, will enable our environment 

 to correct our heredity. 



Every-day experience familiarizes us with the facts which are 

 grouped under the name of heredity. Every one of us bears upon 

 him obvious marks of his parentage, perhaps of remoter relation- 

 ships. More particularly, the sum of tendencies to act in a certain 

 way, which we call character, is often to be traced through a long 

 series of progenitors and collaterals. So we may justly say, that 

 this character, this moral and intellectual essence ofa man, does 

 veritably pass over from one fleshly tabernacle to another, and does 

 really transmigrate from generation to generation. In the new- 

 born infant the character of the stock lies latent, and the ego is 

 little more than a bundle of potentialities. But very early the.se 

 become actualities. From childhood to age they manifest 

 themselves in dulness or brightness, weakness or strength, vicious- ' 

 ness or uprightness, and with each feature modified by confluence 

 with another character, if by nothing else, the character passes on 

 to its incarnation in new bodies. The Indian philosophers call 

 this character karma. 



The mysterious manner in which heredity performs its wonders is 

 not yet known. But Sir James Paget said to his class, " We should 

 not throw away what we do not understand.'' And Hippocrates, 

 the Grecian physician and philosopher, said, " You will, as a rule, 

 find that the form of the body and disposition of the mind corre- 

 spond to the nature of the country." 



The faculties of every animal depend on t.vo causes : First, 

 heredity, or those that have been evolved from the type and 

 become fixed by succession through a long series of ancestors ; 

 secondly, adaptation, or those which are acquired by education, 

 including everything that places the animal in harmony with its 

 environment. 



Let us now take a retrospective view of ancestral inheritances. 

 As we do so, you will find a sympathetic chord has been touched 

 in our nature, for a most melancholy vision is presented to u.s — 

 diseased bodies, dwarfed and deformed ; weak minds, so weak in 

 fact that they cannot see truth, or if perchance they do see it, dis- 

 tort it till it is no longer truth ; souls so black that they feast in 

 darkness on the very dregs of perdition. What a vision to behold ! 

 And do we call these men ? Men who were intended by the Great 

 Creator of the universe to be the crowning piece of His handiwork ! 

 What a fearful manifestation oi penalties for broken laws ! 



There are three causes that lead to all this depravity and misery, 

 viz., an abnormal inheritance, an abnormal env'ronment, and the 

 .improper use or abuse of our functions. If the fountain-head of 

 the stream of life is not pure, we cannot expect the waters below 



