4 
For the Monthly Magazine. 
The ENQUIRER, No. XXV. 
. ON HEREDITARY VIRTUE. 
AY not virtue become hereditary ? 
May not the habits of morality, at 
firft acquired by individuals through the 
continued influence of goed government 
and good education, become, in the courfe 
of a few generations, fo far congenite, as 
to aife&t the erganization of the brain, and 
thus be tranfinifiive to pofierity? I am 
eager to anfwer in the affirmative. 
There is not any difpenfation of Provi- 
dence fo trying to the heart, and fo unac- 
countable by the head of a philofopher, 
as the melancholy train of hereditary ma- 
Jadies which vilit the innocent offspring 
of licentious parents 5 infants who are born - 
to fuffer, as it were, under a penal law of 
life, and to whom nature feems to deny 
the tranquil happinefs that attends the 
mere con{cioufsefs of exiftence. The cri- 
tics havé been fomewhat at a lofs to°ac- 
count for the poetical ipjuitiee committed 
by Virgil, in placing the fouls of infants 
at the entrance of the infernal regions. 
Continuo auditz voces, vagitus et inge nS» 
iniantumque anime flentes in limine primo, 
Quos dulcis vite exfortes, et ab ubere raptos, 
Abftulit, atra dies, et funere merfit acerbo. 
Might not the pioas poet have intended 
particularly to defcribe the morbid pro- 
geny of vicious parents, and to have fe- 
Je&ted fuch a place for their doubtful a nd 
ambiguous criminality; confounding, in 
his uncertain ethics, the fufferings oF the 
children~with the fins of their progenitors ? 
However conjefural this my be, I muft 
add my convict: on, that the debafement 
and degradation of our mental powers are 
liable in the fame manner to defcend by 
inheritance. He who habituates his na- 
ture tovice and fervility ae imprefs a 
proclivity, aztertor to any poflible effect 
_ of education, on his yet kebbis child 
Let every parent feel the truth !—And the 
nation, which for a feries of years has 
naturalized its habits of indolence or cor- 
ruption, will have little chance of regene- 
ration by its internal energies. Let every 
people believe in this fact! 
From fuch a view of human nature I 
feel fefrefhment and confolation in re- 
fie&ting that health, and that’ virtue (the 
health of the foul), may, with equal cer- 
tainty, be propagated to pofterity. My 
idea isthis: That by a proper manner of 
unfolding and perfe&ting the faculries and 
éifpofitions of the individual, the early 
cultom {and education ts shee more} 
will, in time, become oo moral habit, 
and the moral habit will at length grow 
7 
The Enquirer, No. XXV. 
[Aug. 1, , 
into the phyfical confitution, which, after 
a few generations, will develve in fuc- 
ceffion, with at leaft as great certainty as 
hereditary maladies, avid! by thus effeétu- 
ally counterbalancing the mifery they oc-' 
cafion, will vindicate Providence, and cen- 
fole the heart that revolts at the fight of 
unmerited fuffering. In the fame way 
I think the manners of a people, whick 
are nothing more than prevalent habits 
of the plurality, may become intimately 
and phyfically united with the morals, 
and confequently with the happinefs, of a ~ 
whole people, and being as it were incor- 
porated into their nature, humanity may 
not only arrive at that ftate of perfection 
in which every individual becomes a law 
to himfelf, but in which the whole foci- 
ety may become like an individual, con- 
fident of the hereditary morality of his 
defcendant. Thus human nature, in its 
perfonal or national charaéter, may be 
bred downward, until the animal organi- 
zation become fo vitiated, that a public. 
will as certainly tend to corruption, as a 
perfon will fucceed to. the inheritance of _ 
confumption ;: while, on the other hand, 
the individual and the public may be ore 
up to phyfical and conititutional wets 
and happinefs. 4 
I wifh to believe that this theory is! 
practically exemplified among certain claf- 
fes and defcriptions of mankind; and I 
will venture to afk, if the family of Chrif- 
tians, called Quakers, do not illufirate, in 
no {mall degree, ‘this doctrine of heredi- 
tary virtue, this innate innocence, this 
primitive purity and inftingtive’ aptitude 
for the truth and the right, getting fuch 
an affimilation with the “bodily frame, as 
to germinate with the: firft principles of 
exiftence? I know not whether. it may 
appear the credulity of imagination, but» 
I think that the diftincuifhing attribute of 
this fek—Equamimity—has been fo long 
the principle of education, that it is now 
become not a fecond but an original na- - 
ture, and is difcoverable in that undifturb- 
ed regularity of features, particularly 
among the females—that plgeidity of 
countenance—by which £ do not mean 
merely thofe irradiations of good-hu- 
mour, equally fuperficial and evanelcent,- 
but an infelt ferenity of foul—a deeplycha- 
ractered compofure—which has imprefied 
the more folid and permanent hed so 
tion. 
Quakers have been called the Jefuits ae 
Protettantitm ; but I rather think they ares 
on the whole, the beft copyifts of their 
pia and of primuive Chriftianity, in 
heir practice, though, perhaps, not als 
; together 
