uth by saying that "wooden heads are inherited, but wooden legs are
not." This does not by any means imply that we do not have power and
ability to fashion our careers and carve out our own destiny, within
the possible bounds of our hereditary endowment and environmental
surroundings. Heredity does determine our "capital stock," but our own
efforts and acts determine the interest and increase which we may
derive from our natural endowment. From the moment conception takes
place--the very instant when the two sex cells meet and blend--then
and there "the gates of heredity are forever closed." From that time
on we are dealing with the problems of nutrition, development,
education, and environment; therefore, so-called prenatal influence
can have nothing whatever to do with heredity.

A father may have acquired great talent as a physician or a surgeon,
in fact he may hold the chair of surgery in a medical college, but
each of his children come into the world without the slightest
knowledge of the subject, and, as far as direct and immediate heredity
is concerned, will have to work just about as hard to master the
subject as will the same average class of children whose parents were
not surgeons. This must not be taken to mean that certain abilities
and tendencies are not inheritable--for they are; but they are
inherited _through_ the parents--and not _from_ them--directly. These
transmitted characteristics are largely "stock" traits, and usually
have long been present in the "ancestral strain."

MATERNAL IMPRESSIONS

A mother may sing and pray all through the nine months of expectancy,
or she may weep and scold, or even curse. In neither case can she
influence the spiritual or moral tendencies of her child and cause it,
through supposed prenatal influence, to be born with criminal
tendencies or to grow up a pious lad or become a devout minister.
These tendencies and characteristics are all largely determined by the
"depressors," "suppressors," and "determiners" which were present in
the two microscopic and mosaic germ cells which united to start the
embryo at the time of conception.

The child is destined to be born, endowed, and equipped with the
mental, nervous, and physical powers which his line has fallen heir to
all through the past ages. Down through the ages education, religion,
environment, and other special influences have no doubt played a small
part in influencing and determining hereditary characteristics