of the fathers, which, the Good Book tells
us, are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.

It is a fact to challenge attention that the child is the product of the
entire past. His essential nature is comparatively fixed at birth and is
beyond the power or caprice of parent or environment to change in any
fundamental particular during the short period of a lifetime. This
assertion must not be wrongly interpreted; the possibilities of training
and education are great, but they can do little to overcome all of the
defects placed upon the child by heredity.

Science tells us that normal children are born with the same number and
kind of instincts. By instinct is meant the tendency to do certain things
in a definite way without previous experience. In all children, for
example, we find the instinct of fear, the instinct for play, for
self-preservation. These instincts begin to manifest themselves more or
less strongly as the child develops.

Children also have certain capacities. Capacity may be defined as the
possibility to develop skill in certain directions. One, for instance, may
have a greater capacity to develop musical ability than another; so with
art or business, or ability for any other work. Capacities, more than
instincts, seem to depend on the characteristics of parents or immediate
ancestors. Thus a child may take after father or mother, or grandparent in
this or that particular ability. Instincts, on the other hand, seem to be
his inheritance from the race. But whatever his gifts from parent or past
the child is born a distinct individual. This is true not only with regard
to his physical organism but in respect to his spiritual nature. The
relative strength of his instincts, added to the number and quality of his
capacities determine what is called individuality. This is what makes each
child differ from all others, and this distinctive nature cannot be
essentially changed, within our brief lives, though it does possess
marvelous powers of development and adaptation. For illustration:
Cultivation may develop a perfect specimen of a crabapple, but no amount
of careful training could change the crabapple into a Johnathan. Likewise,
no system of education can hope to change a numskull into a Newton, or to
produce a Solomon from a Simple Simon.

The first vital concern of parents, therefore, should be to see that the
child is not robbed of his sacred birthright to be well-born.

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