uildings could not be made,
people would fly off the earth and go, no one knows whither. Why, all
the suns, moons, and stars of the universe are held in place by
gravitation. If we are ever hurt through the action of that law it is
because we were not happily related to it, that is all. The law is good,
and what we have to do is to learn to work with it.

"It is just so with this law of heredity. It is the law of transmission.
It works right along and transmits good or evil. It is our part to relate
ourselves to it so that it will transmit mostly good. When we come to
think of it, we see that that is what it principally does. Health, and
honesty, and virtue, all good traits, are so constantly transmitted that
we do not think of their coming through heredity, just as we do not
think of all order and stability coming through gravity; but when
undesirable traits are inherited we complain of the law, just as we
complain when we are hurt through the law of gravitation. But do you not
see that it is the very fact that the law is sure, that it invariably
transmits evil, is one guarantee of its surety in transmitting good?
Indeed, the Bible tells us that good is transmitted in greater degree
than evil. The third commandment gives us the law of heredity: 'For I,
the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the
fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of them that
hate me and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep
my commandments.' That does not mean thousands of individuals, but, as
the revised version gives it, 'thousands of generations.' So you see
what encouragement this law gives us. The evil in us is to be transient,
the good everlasting. Instead of being weighed down by our undesirable
inheritances, we should be encouraged to overcome them and to cultivate
our good ones."

"Mamma, don't you think the fathers have something to do as well as the
mothers, in trying to give a better inheritance to the children?"

"I surely do, and that is where I think a girl needs to be especially
wise in the choice of a husband. If a man has traits or habits that she
would not want her children to have, she should remember that, through
the law of heredity, that trait is one they will be very likely to
inherit.

"Girls quite often think it does not matter if a young man smokes, or
even if he drinks a little, but when we study heredity we see what a
threat such habits are to the he