=No Cause for Discouragement.--=At first glance when we realize that notwithstanding our individual advancement, that in spite of all our painstaking efforts toward self-improvement, we can not add one jot or tittle to the native ability of our children, that, aside from possible advantageous germinal variations, they will have to start in at approximately the same level as we did, and like us will have to struggle, or be coaxed, pulled or spurred up to the higher reaches of attainments, we are apt to feel discouraged and to look on heredity as the hand of fate which irrevocably bars progress. But there is another side to the picture. This very fact of heredity which can not be altered at will is the conservative factor which maintains the excellence of our standard strains of plants and animals, and sustains man himself at his present level of accomplishment. While we are denied advancement through the efforts of the flesh, we are also largely protected from our misfortunes and follies, as witness the non-inheritance of mutilations, of various maladies of extrinsic origin, or of personally acquired bad habits. =Improved Environment Will Help Conserve the Superior Strains When They Do Appear.--=If we can not hand on to our descendants a personally enhanced blood heritage, we at least can do our share toward building up a social heritage of established truth, of efficient institutions and of stimulating ideals, through which their dormant capacities may be led to expand more surely and more effectively to their uttermost limits. Each advance in such social heritage will tend more and more to create an atmosphere which will make it sure that the occasional real progressive and permanent variations which occur from time to time will find adequate expression and preservation in future lines of descendants. It will reduce the numbers of our "mute, inglorious Miltons" by more certainly disclosing the individual of exceptional talents and insuring for him an opportunity of revealing them to the best advantage. Above all, since surrounding influences are especially powerful on young and developing organisms, we should realize that great care must be exercised in behalf of the young child to secure an environment which is saturated with wholesome influences. For it is a rule of development that if the environment is faulty the organism is impaired. CHAPTER VI PRENATAL INFLUENCES