has a certain rightness and justification. As, however, our knowledge increases we shall learn that we are, on the one hand, a little more responsible for future generations than we are accustomed to think, and, on the other hand, a little less responsible for our own good or bad qualities. Our fiat makes the future man, but, in the same way, we are ourselves made by a choice and a will not our own. A man may indeed, within limits, mould himself, but the materials he can alone use were handed on to him by his parents, and whether he becomes a man of genius, a criminal, a drunkard, an epileptic, or an ordinarily healthy, well-conducted, and intelligent citizen, must depend at least as much on his parents as on his own effort or lack of effort, since even the aptitude for effective effort is largely inborn. As we learn to look on the facts from the only sound standpoint of heredity, our anger or contempt for a failing and erring individual has to give way to the kindly but firm control of a weakling. If the children's teeth have been set on edge it is because the parents have eaten sour grapes.
If, however, we certainly cannot bring legal or even moral force to compel everyone to maintain such detailed registers of himself, his ancestral stocks, and his offspring—to say nothing of inducing him to make them public—there is something that we can do. We can make it to his interest to keep such a record.
6If it became an advantage in life to a man to possess good ancestors, and to be himself a good specimen of humanity in mind, character, and physique, we may be sure that those who are above the average in these matters will be glad to make use of that superiority. Insurance offices already make an inquisition into these matters, to which no one objects, because a man only submits to it for his own advantage; while for military and some