=Another proof.=--In every institution for the feeble-minded are to be found inmates who have the “Hotchinson notched teeth,” “crowfoot tracts” in the palate and throat, certain marks on the body--scientific proofs that such are congenital syphilitics. Some ancestor, two or three generations gone by, lived an immoral life, became infected with a vicious disease and transmitted the degenerative influences down the line to where it ended in complete degeneracy. =Who is responsible?=--Is this a punishment from God upon innocent, helpless children? No. God is in no sense responsible for it. Is nature? No. Who is responsible? Men who sow their wild oats and boast of their “personal liberty” to do as they please. Have God and nature any part in this? Yes. God and nature in infinite interest, mercy and love for the unborn millions who would be blighted with inconceivable degeneracy and suffering, should they be born of such degenerate parents, say, “We have given these descendants four generations in which to prevent further degeneracy by marrying into pure and sober families, by reformation or by redemption,” and since they have not availed themselves of these restorative and redemptive means, reproduction must cease. =Morbid heredity and bad environment.=--Bad environment and bad heredity explain the presence of every convict in our penal institutions and every inmate in the asylums. Laws and political administration that tolerate, regulate and encourage strong drink and social immorality, the two chief causes of degeneracy, and the parents who indulged in these iniquities, are largely responsible for these thousands of defective and delinquent beings who are crowding our asylums and penal institutions to a dangerous and unsanitary overflowing. Father, son and grand-son, uncles and cousins galore crowd these institutions. Much of their mail is from relatives and bears the postmark of a similar institution, showing that crime and insanity run in families. =Man’s development originally under two agencies.=--It is evident that God originally placed man’s development under the intelligent control of heredity and environment. If man had as wisely applied these agencies to his own improvement as he now does to the improvement of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, he would have developed to the highest possible physical, mental and moral attainments. =His fall.=--Man’s present condition of hereditary and acquired degeneracy clearly reveals that somewhere in human history he has thrown himself out of harmony with physical, mental and moral laws governing his well-being. The record of man’s fall as given in Genesis is at least the figure of a great fact in human history. Man’s fall involved the violation of some law or laws vitally related to his physical, mental and moral natures.