CHAPTER XI.
THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY OF PARENTS IN HEREDITY.
The Duty of the Present to Future Generations.—Darwin on Heredity.—Nature Inexorable.—The Mother’s Investment of Moulding Power.—The Father’s Important Part in the Transmission of Heredity.—The Parents Workers Together with God.—Parents must Reap What They Sow.—The Law and the Gospel of Heredity Contrasted.—The Children of Inebriates and Others.—Lessons from Reformatory Institutions.—The Outcast Margaret.—The Mother of Samson.—How a Child Became an Embodiment of “The Lady of the Lake.”—The Woman Who Desired to be the Mother of Governors.—Importance of this Study.
“Often do the spirits of great events stride on before the events,
And in to-day already walks to-morrow.”
“It is not just as we take it,
This mystical life of ours,
Life’s harvest will yield as we make it
A harvest of thorns or of flowers.”
“Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children, whom thou mayest make princes in all the earth.”