“What are they?” asked he. “They look like pollywogs.”
“As much like them as anything. But they are not pollywogs. They have a bigger sounding name than that. They are called spermatozoa, or each one is a spermatozoon. They are so tiny that they are not visible except with the aid of a microscope, and yet they are alive and very active. They live and move in a fluid called semen, and they are the living principle contributed by the male to the formation of a new creature. Each one contains in itself all the particular traits, characteristics or talents which the father would confer on the child of which this spermatozoon would form a part. You are like your father in some things, I suppose.”
“Yes, I am like papa in size and in my love for mathematics. He says I have his quick temper, too.”
“That leads me to speak of another fact. You see that you were a part of your father during his whole life, and you were affected by all that affected him. You were changed or modified by his habits. If he tried to curb his quick temper, it has made it easier for you to control yourself; but if he allowed it full sway, it has made it harder for you. If he were truthful and honest, it has made it easy for you to be the same; but if he were wild and dissipated, it would make it easier for you to yield to the same temptations.”
“Was that what he meant when he said he was not surprised that Will Grey was so bad a boy, for his father was a very wild young man?”
“Yes, that was exactly what he meant.”
“If that is so why don’t fathers tell their boys about it so that they can behave better when they are young?”