As much as if you should say, "The centripetal force in nature has a
tendency to bring everything to the centre, and therefore all things
come to the centre. The centrifugal force in nature has a tendency to
throw out everything to the periphery, and therefore everything will
go out to the periphery." You know as well as I know that you can make
the centripetal overcome the centrifugal, and you can make the
centrifugal overcome the centripetal. As when there is a mighty tide
of good in a family that may be overcome by determination to evil, as
in the case of Aaron Burr, the libertine, who had for father President
Burr, the consecrated; as in the case of Pierrepont Edwards, the
scourge of New York society seventy years ago, who had a Christian
ancestry; while on the other hand some of the best men and women of
this day are those who have come of an ancestry of which it would not
be courteous to speak in their presence.