ment which enhances the value. There is no merit in not doing what we have no temptation to do; the merit is in the temptation resisted, the weakness overcome. The recluse who withdraws from the world that he may not meet temptation, is not so strong as he who remains in the world and fights the devil out of sight.

It is a great weakness in parents that they are not willing their children should suffer in the acquisition of moral rectitude; they seem to think their offspring can go through life without pain. This folly affects the child, and does more to weaken character than any other one influence. Inspire the young with courage to bear for the right, to expect to suffer inconveniences, and to do so willingly as a natural concomitant of virtuous effort.

To submit to any suffering robs it of half its bitterness. They who earnestly desire to conquer are willing to endure all for which the conquest calls. They are the true soldiers, and will find their compensation in the victory which cannot fail to be theirs.

Not only in the battle, but after the unsuc cessful battle, the vanquished must suffer, and by suffering he will attain the requisite strength. Temptation calls forth the evil in our nature that we may become conscious of it and eradicate it. We may fall before such seductions for a time, but when the avengers,

retribution, remorse and repentance overtake us, they slay the evil that is in us, and after we have recognized our passions we should not again be misled. In the Purgatoria the spirits plunge gladly into the fire, because they know it purges. Lanier depicts Gwendolen's state after coming under Deronda's influence as follows:-"The possibility of making one's life a good life, not only makes it worth living but invests it with a romantic interest whose depth is infinitely beyond that of all the society pleasures which had hitherto formed her horizon."

It is not wise to develop the child's moral nature by specific, arbitrary rules. Teach him RIGHT THINKING, and above all RIGHT FEELING, for noble and high feeling not only brings men into the light where they can see well, but keeps undefiled that tabernacle of God, their integrity, which is the one essential for both individuals and society.

Religion is the dynamics of good morals. Because we often find good men and women who disclaim belief in the supernatural (the socalled agnostics), we may conclude that it is a non-essential, that their morals were of independent growth. It is a deception; they are the fruit which has fallen from the tree of religion, and these good men and women do not realize that the fruit was ever attached to it. Religion is a leaven that has entered the world,

and though the world "know it not" and cast it off, it has done its faithful work and will do it to the end of time.

The child's faith will doubtless be that of its parents, that which came to it by tradition, and it matters little what is the denomination. The more deeply religious one is, the less one cares about sects. But I should wish the child to be Christian in the best sense of the word- -a follower of the spirit of Christ—that spirit of charity, justice, compassion and self-annihilation wherein all sects reverence Him, and in following which none can err.

There has been growing a sentiment that children should not be taught dogmatically in religious matters, but should await their own interpretations in mature life; nevertheless, parents should have religious convictions themselves, and those which after profound and prayerful effort appeal to them as truest, should be the instruction given their children, at least on cardinal subjects on which the child must receive enlightenment from some source.

In so far as religion is a means of obtaining soul culture, and not a matter of theological polemics and hide-bound dogma, it can be and is the source of man's truest inspirations; the preference should therefore be given the denominations which hold character above dogma, the spirit above the letter.

III

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT

MAN is the product of two powers; first the organic, with which he is born; second the acquired, which comes to him by environment, and by the action and reaction of his faculties. Their respective importance and value have been the subject of discussion, debate and investigation by the leading scientists and philosophers of the day, some contending that the difference between men is only a difference of education; others vindicating the claim of the innate tendency, the preeminence of heredity. Both claims are exaggerations, and a modification of each is nearer the truth. It would be utterly unscientific to believe that man does not partake of the characteristics and tendencies of his parents. In all nature like begets like. Any given species reproduces the same species, the bacillus of cholera produces only cholera bacilli and that of consumption only consumption. In the lower forms of animal and vegetable life the protoplasm is unaltered and transmitted almost without change. Unlike the creatures of the natural and animal world, man has intellect and soul, and is thereby endowed

with a free will and power to modify his natural inheritance.

The antimony which dominates the question is solvable only by experiment and experience, and the data of both claimants are modified by the results.

When it is observed in the animal world how exactly and uniformly one breed and quality begets the like breed and quality, it would seem a simple conclusion that the law of transmission would be as inflexible in the case of man. It proves not to be so with higher organisms; the higher the organism the greater the differentiation; in these organisms, only tendencies, not conditions, are transmitted. The causes of the differentiation are both organic and acquired. The child has two parents, perhaps of different physical types, the one blonde the other brunette; the child cannot possibly be both, he must resemble the one or the other, or be a modification of both. These parents have qualities unlike; the mother may be impulsive, the father phlegmatic in temperament; the child can inherit only the qualities of one parent, or be a modification of the two, and thereby produces a more perfect balance than existed in either parent; or the two tendencies may struggle in him always, sometimes one, sometimes the other prevailing. In all opposing tendencies one will dominate and the other be