We must not forget that there is also a spectre of heredity. It is seen under different forms. The physician is often reminded by his patients that they have inherited this or that disease from father or mother, or an ancestor farther back. Now, there are few diseases which come to us directly through inheritance. In a majority of cases they are not transmitted. Even consumption is not. If we accept the modern theory of its origin, as we must, this plague is the result of germs floating in the air being introduced into our bodies by respiration, or in food, or through contact with abraided Surfaces. Those with weakened constitutions are more liable to it than the strong, and a weakened constitution may be inherited, for in this case the germ-plasm will not be well nourished and will suffer; but those thus handicapped in the race of life will get on far better by endowing themselves with knowledge and obeying the laws of life than they can by living under the shadow of the great spectre of heredity, and casting anathemas at their ancestors for not having done more for them. No doubt most of them have done the best they could; and if life is worth living, as most of us believe, we owe them many thanks for having brought us into the world. THE SPECTRE OF HEREDITY.--There is a spectre of heredity of a more serious nature. It is the spirit of the dead past, with its mighty hand on society, on institutions, on modes of life. Wendell Phillips used to tell a story, in his anti-slavery addresses, which illustrates the evil effect of this inherited spectre. It ran in this wise. In an Eastern temple, an idol, in the image of a god, stood calmly on its pedestal. It was sacrilege to touch it with human hands; but rats having no such feelings of awe in the presence of a deity, began to gnaw about it in various places, yet no one was bold enough to remove it to a place of safety; and so the rats gnawed on and on, and built their nests within the sacred image. In time they loosened it from its firm foundation, and one morning, when the worshippers came in to pay their devotions, they found their god had fallen prostrate on the floor. So it is sometimes with our inherited beliefs. They hold us back from progress like a heavy weight. We fear to remove them, for they are sacred inheritances, idols, gods, and so our institutions decay, perish. FOOTNOTES: [106:A] Darwin did not regard this experiment as settling this question. He had great affection, so to speak, for this poor, despised theory, and believed it would finally be established as in the main true. EVOLUTION'S HOPEFUL PROMISE FOR A HEALTHIER RACE. _Given before the Greenacre Conference of Evolutionists._