henceforward, all the thought, the money, the religious enthusiasm dedicated to the regeneration of the race, could be devoted to the generation of our descendants, to the conditions and environments of parents and children, the whole face of society might be changed before we celebrate the next centennial of our national life. Science has vindicated our right to discuss freely whether our ancestors were apes; let it be as free to ask whether our posterity shall be idiots, dwarfs, and knaves, and if not, by what change, if any, in our social institutions, such wretched results may be avoided. Gatton in his work on "Heredity," says our present civilization is growing too complicated for our best minds even to grasp, and to meet successfully the issues of the hour, humanity must be lifted up a few degrees, as speedily as possible. And where must this radical work begin? The best hope for the progress of the race in political, religious, and social life lies in the right birth, education, and development of our children. Here is the true starting-point for the philosopher. Let the young man who is indulging in all manner of excesses remember that in considering the effect of the various forms of dissipation on himself, his own happiness or danger, he does not begin to measure the evil of his life. As the high priest at the family altar, his deeds of darkness will inflict untold suffering on generation after generation. One of the most difficult lessons to impress on any mind is the power and extent of individual influence; and parents above all others resist the belief that their children are exactly what they make them, no more, no less; like produces like. The origin of ideas was long a disputed point with different schools of philosophers. Locke took the ground that the mind of every child born into the world is like a piece of blank paper; that you may write thereon whatever you will, but science has long since proved that such idealists as Descartes were nearer right, that the human family come into the world with ideas, with marked individual proclivities; that the pre-natal conditions have more influence than all the education that comes after. If family peculiarities are transmitted to the third and fourth generation, the grandson clothed with the same gait, gesture, mode of thought and expression as the grandfather he has never seen, it is evident that each individual may reap some advantage and development from those predecessors whose lives in all matters great and small are governed by law, by a conscientious sense of duty, not by feeling, chance, or appetite. If there is a class of educators who need special preparation for their high and holy duties, it is those who assume the responsibilities of parents. Shall they give less thought to immortal beings than the artist to his landscape or statue.