We are all members of a great organism, which is constituted by the whole of human kind, past, present and future, and it is our duty to act in such a manner that the whole shall be benefited by our conduct; which it cannot be if we are careless as to our own disposition or as to the character of our offspring.
Our Aryan ancestors were conscious of their duty towards the race, and probably to this fact was largely due the high physical development the white race attained. Only by acting in their spirit can we hope to maintain the race at its high level or prevent its deterioration and decay.
The important influence which the gratification of the sexual impulse has had over the development of the aesthetic side of Nature has been often insisted on; and there is no reason why its gratification should not be attended also with the development of the highest mental qualities, if these are made use of in the formation and exercise of the marriage relations between the sexes.—C. Staniland Wake.
Too Little Fatherhood.
The modern child is threatened not with too much mother but with too little father, and this danger is heightened by the sudden release of womanhood from the ban of conventionality and of the domineering power of physical force. Let her not too readily accept as complimentary to herself the church's adoration of Mary. Woman is made of no purer stuff than man, her companion, man her father. She cannot transmit from her own veins or her companion's veins any purer life stuff, any finer impulse to her daughter than she does to her son. We need more fathers in the home, more men teachers in our public schools; and if our homes and schools are not organized so as to evoke and direct this masculine investment, then let them be reorganized. It is not true that mothers are peculiarly the divinely appointed teachers of children, that to them is especially entrusted the intellectual or spiritual destinies of the young. That argument is based upon the analogies of the past; it is a reversion to primitive conditions, an illustration of the law of atavism, like the return to six fingers and toes in some people, or the restoration in others of the muscle that can move the ear. The highest reaches of evolution point to a double responsibility and a double potency. In the interest of the child, then, let us lift him out of a mother rule into a father and mother rule. Let the home be girdled with masculine order and justice as well as with feminine love and tenderness. Let there be strength as well as tenderness. Let there be in it mind as well as heart, vigor as well as sympathy. All these are spiritual children which cannot be born except in the bi-sexual realm.—Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones.
The Flat-Head Indians and Heredity.
Amongst the round-head tribes woman holds a higher position, whereas amongst the flat-heads she is a mere drudge. In by-gone days it was common to see a tired-looking woman walking behind her husband carrying a heavy load, while he walked on before with nothing.
Again, the round-heads have a remarkable mythology, while the others have a poor affair.
Mr. Dean has informed me that the flat-head, which would be an acquired character, is never transmitted to offspring—another argument against the Lamarchian theory, that acquired characters are transmitted.
That whatever injures the physical or intellectual health of parents tends to degrade their offspring has long been evident. I think we have a good race illustration of this in the effects of flattening and deforming the skulls of children among the Flat-Head Indians, who for centuries followed this precedent. Information has been furnished me by special request by Mr. James Dean, of Victoria, B. C., bearing on this point. He writes:
