In actual practice our plans seem not to previse
grandfathers and grandmothers, and stop short even of fathers and
mothers. The child of the next generation has a right to a father and a
mother of untainted blood, and neither the home nor the school can
ignore this right.
=Transmitted weaknesses.=--If these rights are not scrupulously
respected by the present generation, the child of the future may come
into the world under a handicap that all the educational agencies
combined can neither remove nor materially mitigate. If he is crippled
in mind or in body because of excesses on the part of his progenitors,
the schools and hospitals may help him through life in a sorry sort of
fashion, but his condition is evermore a reminder to him of how much he
has missed in comparison with the child of sound body and mind. If such
a child does not imprecate even the memory of the ancestors whose
vitiated blood courses through his stricken body, it will be because his
mind is too weak to reason from effect to cause or because his
affliction has taught him large charity. He will feel that he has been
shamefully cheated in the great game of life, with no hope of
restitution. By reason of this, his gaze is turned backward instead of
forward, and this is a reversal of the rightful attitude of child life.
Instead of looking forward with hope and happiness, he droops through a
somber life and constantly broods upon what might have been.
Pages:
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38