The thoughtful reader will not deem that the writer is making too much of these preliminary matters. Besides their intrinsic interest and value, they are vitally necessary for the full understanding of much that is to follow. In the formation of the character and the shaping of the career of any man the circumstance of supremest power is the ancestral spirits which report themselves in him from the past, and the organific influences of blood and nerve brought to bear on him in the mystic world of the womb previous to his entrance into this breathing theatre of humanity. The ignorance and the squeamishness prevalent in regard to the subject of the best raising of children are the causes of indescribable evils ramifying in all directions. It has been tabooed from the province of public study and teaching, although no other matter presents such pressing and sacred claims on universal attention. It cannot always continue to be so neglected or forced into the dark. The young giant, Social Science, so rapidly growing, will soon insist on the thorough investigation of it, and on the accordant organization in practice of the truths which shall be elicited. When by analysis, generalization, experiment, and all sorts of methods and tests, men shall have ransacked every other subject, it may be hoped, they will begin to apply a little study to the one subject of really paramount importance,--the breeding of their own species. When the same scientific care and skill, based on accumulated and sifted knowledge, shall be devoted to this province as has already been exemplified with such surprising results in the improvement of the breeds of sheep, cows, horses, hens, and pigeons, still more amazing achievements may be confidently expected. The ranks of hopeless cripples, invalids, imbeciles, idlers, and criminals will cease to be recruited. The rate of births may perhaps be reduced to one-fourth of what it now is, with a commensurate elevation of the condition of society by the weeding out of the perishing and dangerous classes. And the rate of infant mortality may be reduced to one per cent. of its present murderous average. The regeneration of the world will be secured by the perfecting of its generation. These ideas were familiar to Forrest. He often spoke of them, and wondered they were so slow to win the notice they deserved. For the hypocrisy or prudery which affected to regard them as indelicate and to be shunned in polite speech, he expressed contempt. In his soul the chord of ancestral lineage which bound his being with a vital line running through all foregone generations of men up to the Author of men, was, as he felt it, exceptionally intense and sacred. And surely the whole subject of our consanguinity in time and space is, to every right thinker, as full of poetic attraction and religious awe on one side as it is of scientific interest and social importance on the other.