We find that the land has three divisions: the Domain of the Body, the
Field of Intellect, and the Garden of the Heart,--the same divisions
that exist in the Sunny Land of Childhood, and that we have been
cultivating ever since we were born. These are the kingdoms which came
to us with the gift of life. We recognize that the gifts which come to
us at birth and death are of life for ourselves alone, and we have had
no thought during our childish years except to develop our powers for
our own advantage. It may be we have not felt perfectly satisfied with
our lot in life, but we have felt that we were not responsible for this.
We did not choose to be born in America instead of Asia, though we do
not rebel at this fact. We did not select to be white instead of black.
It is not our fault if we are born of a family in which consumption is
an inheritance; and, on the other hand, we can claim no credit to
ourselves if we have inherited strong bodies with healthful tendencies.
It is our misfortune, and not our fault, if we are not quite perfectly
poised by nature; it is our good fortune, not our foresight, if we have
genius instead of mediocrity. The gifts that come to us through
inheritance are ours without blame or credit to us but they bring with
them the responsibility of their use. We are responsible for maintaining
or increasing our dower of health by obedience to physical laws;
responsible for the cultivation of our intellects, for the development
of inherited virtues, and the annihilation of inherited vices.
If you study your characteristics and talents you find that they repeat
those of your ancestry. Your eyes, hair, mouth, chin, your stature,
figure, complexion, your talents, capabilities, tendencies, your likes
and dislikes, your faults as well as your virtues are repetitions of
those who preceded you in this living network of existence of which you
form a part. If you are not like father or mother you may be like
grandfather or great-grandmother. If you do not find yourself repeating
the characteristics or personality of any one ancestor, you may find
yourself a composite photograph of several. And even if you cannot trace
in yourself a likeness to any family representative, you may still be
assured that from some of them your traits have come to you. You have
only to recall the complexity of your sources of inheritance and then
remember how many words can be spelled from the twenty-six letters of
the alphabet to see that you can hardly measure the peculiar forces of
mind and body that may come to you though that power of transmission
which we call heredity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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