If we could transmit our acquired characteristics, education would have a relatively smaller, and a much more fixed function in the "general scheme," but we cannot. We can only transmit what was inherent in us when created. This simply means that, at the moment of conception, the child is created,--it is a completed whole,--what it is to be is fixed at that moment, its inherent capacities are formed. Nothing can affect it, in this sense, after that moment. No act of either parent can have any influence on it. Whatever ability the father or mother possessed of an innate character is transmitted to the child at the instant of conception and that innate legacy constitutes the working instrument of the child for all time. It cannot be added to by education, or by environment, but both of these may have a large influence in deciding whether it will be developed to its highest possible limit of attainment. Education, mental, moral and physical, is limited by this inability to transmit acquired character to the persons educated. Each generation must, therefore, begin, not where their parents left off, but at the point [35] where they began. The same difficulties and the same problems must be met at the beginning of each generation. THE TRUE PROVINCE OF EDUCATION.--Education may justly be the instrument, however, which will educate public opinion to a true appreciation of the function of race culture. In this way the cause of the eugenist will greatly prosper, and the race will profit through the effort which will further the conservation of the best and most fit specimens for parenthood. So also may education, through the molding of public opinion, create sound opinion,--when each individual will be a center of eugenic enthusiasm. Especially does this responsibility fall upon parents and those who are in charge of childhood. The young must be taught the supreme sanctity of parenthood. They must be instructed in eugenic principles in a way that will impart to them the definite knowledge that it is the highest and holiest science. The eugenic education of children is the real beginning at the beginning, the indispensable necessity, if race culture is to assume its transcendent role in modern civilization. It is urgently necessary for both sexes but more especially for girls. "Urgently necessary," because, though Herbert Spencer wrote the following criticism nearly fifty years ago, the conditions are much the same to-day:--