One excuse for the assumption of a Have-To-Be-Bad class lurks under
the suspicion of irremedial hereditary taint. This suspicion has been
proved to be without foundation.
Heredity is race memory. Physical heredity is memory and perpetuation
of physical characteristics, like legs, arms, senses, color, etc., but
is constantly being modified by environment. Mental heredity does not
follow the physical but is a sensitive undeveloped film which holds
itself a blank in the darkness but develops in the light of
environment. While physical heredity goes on adding to its
proportions, if allowed to normally develop, newly-born mentality must
be attended by example, books, or other monuments, to start it on the
plane of intelligence of its progenitors or it becomes as blank as
that of a savage; with force, but no aim. The remarkable mental
difference of children, while there is strong physical resemblance, in
a family, denies the close continuity or potency of mental heredity in
the matter of equipment and tendencies, which constitute the basis of
character. The force is there but each is a distinct, new and
important message from the Creator, given us to interpret and
cultivate according to the best intelligence available to us.
NOTE: The careful observations of Ernest Bicknell,
Esquire, (secretary of the Indiana Board of State Charities, at
the time the observations were made, but at present secretary of
the Associated Charities of the City of Chicago,) relative to the
transmission of Feeble Mind in parents to their offspring, only
serve to strengthen our assertion relative to mental heredity.
Feeble Mind is a lack of healthy brain tissue and relates to
quantity of mind possibility, while mental bent is a matter of
quality and is amenable to direction of aim, either in the
direction of good, or in the direction of bad efforts. Ingenuous
childhood prefers the good in all normal cases, even if its home
surroundings are perverse, for the good is sweeter, and children
are especially susceptible to the allurement of sweets.
The ranks of greatness and genius are usually filled from humble
parental sources, in which character dominates over a desire for
material accumulation, and rarely from greatness or genius itself,
whose child-product, under parental neglect--or possibly
shadow--frequently drops to an insignificant place in the scale of
usefulness. If any fixed, progressive, inexorable law of mental
heredity were in force in evolution, these tendencies would be
reversed. Mind is Nature's one unknown quantity, except that it is
good in preference to being bad, if it is given a chance to
choose; progressive, if deterrents to its normal growth are
removed from about it, but reactive and resentful if denied the
blessing of cultivation.
The efficacy of Character-Building schools lies in their ability to
teach children how to aim. What they learn while character is forming
is their chief equipment in life.
Whoever learns to swim or to play billiards or to shoot when he is
young never forgets his cunning at these acquired habits. It is the
work of the kindergartner to find out what the natural born equipment
of the child is, and to direct it; teach it to shoot right and
straight, to swim safely through life, and to carom, follow or draw
with the skill of an expert billiardist; carom from the evil, follow
the walks of usefulness and draw unto itself the happiness of life.