It is pleasing to observe that in Würtemberg there are two excellent laws, calculated to improve the moral and physical condition of the people, which other States would do well to adopt. First, "It is illegal for any young man to marry before he is twenty-five, or any young woman before she is eighteen; and a young man, at whatever age he wishes to marry, must show to the police and the priest of the commune where he resides that he is able, and has the prospect, to provide for a wife and family." The second law compels parents to send their children to school from the age of six to fourteen years.*

There is no moral difficulty in admitting and admiring the wisdom and benevolence of the institution by which good qualities are transmitted from parents to children; but it is frequently held as unjust to the latter that they should inherit parental deficiencies, and be made to suffer for sins which they did not commit.

With a view to answering this objection, let us, 1stly, suppose the law of hereditary descent to be abrogated altogether that is to say, the natural qualities of each individual of the race to be conferred at birth, without the slightest reference to what his parents had been or done; it is clear that this form of constitution would have excluded the means of improvement of the race. The brains of the New Hollanders and other savage tribes are distinguished by great deficiencies in the moral and intellectual organs.

Now, if a considerable development of these is indispensable to the comprehension of science and the practice of virtue, it would, on the present supposition, be impossible to raise the New Hollanders, as a people, one step higher in capacity for intelligence than that they now occupy. We might cultivate each generation up to the limits of its powers, but there the improvement (and a low one it would be) would stop; for, the next generation being produced with brains equally deficient in the moral and intellectual regions, no principle of increasing amelioration would exist. The same remarks are applicable to every tribe of mankind. If we assume modern Europeans as a standard -then, if the law of hereditary descent were abrogated, every deficiency which at this moment is attributable to imperfect or disproportionate development would be irremediable by human means, and would continue

*See Mr. Loudon on the Marriage Laws of Germany.

while the race existed. Each generation might be cultivated till the summit-level of its capacities was attained, but higher than this no succeeding generation could rise.

When we contrast with such a prospect the very opposite effects flowing from the law of hereditary transmission of qualities in an increasing ratio, the whole advantages are perceived to be on the side of the latter arrangement. According to this rule, the children of those who have obeyed the organic, the moral, and the intellectual laws will, when well educated, not only start from the highest level of their parents in acquired knowledge, but will inherit an enlarged development of the moral and intellectual faculties, and will thus enjoy an increasing capability of discovering and obeying the institutions of the Creator.

It is a remarkable fact that whole tribes of mankind attain to a certain point of civilisation, beyond which, so far as history records, they do not appear spontaneously to advance. Some aboriginal American tribes apparently continued savage for thousands of years, while others stopped short at a low grade of cultivation. Chinese and Hindu civilisation seems to have been long stationary.

No

None of the

Mr. Timothy Flint, a Presbyterian clergyman, who passed ten years, commencing in 1815, in wanderings and preaching in the valley of the Mississippi, says of the Indians among whom he lived that "they have not the same acute and tender sensibilities with the other races of men. They seem callous to every passion but rage. Their impassible fortitude and endurance of suffering, which have been so much vaunted, are, after all, in my mind, the result of a greater degree of physical insensibility. ordinary stimulus excites them to action. common excitements, endearments, or motives operate upon them at all. They seem to hold most of the things that move us in proud disdain. The horrors of their warfare, the infernal rage of their battles, the demoniac fury of gratified revenge, the alternations of hope and despair in their gambling, to which they are addicted far beyond the whites, the brutal exhilaration of drunkenness-these are their excitements." He concludes: "It strikes me that Christianity is the religion of civilised man; that the savages must first be civilised; and that, as there is little hope that the present generation of Indians can be civilised, there is but little more that they will be Christianised."

2dly. We may suppose the law of hereditary descent to be limited to the transmission of good qualities, and abrogated as to the transmission of bad ones; and it may be thought that such an arrangement would be more benevolent and just. But to this view there are objections, which do not occur to the mind without reflection. We see that a vicious and debased parent is actually defective in the moral and intellectual organs. Now, if his children should inherit exactly the same development as himself, this would be the transmission of imperfections, which is the thing objected to; while, if they were to receive a development fixed by Nature, and not at all referable to that of the parent, this would render the whole race stationary in their first condition, without the possibility of improvement in their capacities. But the bad development may be supposed to transmit, by hereditary descent, a good development.

This, however, would set at nought the supremacy of justice and benevolence; it would render the consequences of contempt for and violation of the Divine laws, and of obedience to them, by the parents, in this particular, precisely alike. The debauchee, the cheat, the murderer, and the robber would be able to look on the prospects of their posterity with the same confidence in their welfare and happiness as the pious intelligent Christian who had continually sought to know God and to obey His institutions. Certainly, no one in whom the higher sentiments prevail will for a moment regard this imagined change as any improvement on the Creator's arrangements. What a host of motives to moral and religious conduct would at once be withdrawn were such a spectacle of Divine government to be exhibited to the world!

3dly. It may be supposed that human happiness would have been more completely secured by endowing all men at birth with that degree of development of the moral and intellectual faculties which would have best fitted them for discovering and obeying the Creator's laws, and by preventing all aberrations from this standard; just as the lower animals appear to have received instincts and capacities adjusted with perfect wisdom to their conditions. Two remarks occur on this supposition :

First, We are not competent at present to judge correctly how far the development actually bestowed on the human race is, or is not, wisely adapted to their circumstances; for

possibly there are, in the great system of human society, departments exactly suited to all existing mental conditions, not imperfect through disease, though our present knowledge may be insufficient for their discovery. The want of a natural index to the mental dispositions and capacities of individuals, and of a true theory of the constitution of society, may have hitherto precluded philosophers from arriving at sound conclusions on this question. It appears to me probable that, while there is great room for improvement in the talents and dispositions of vast numbers of individuals, the imperfections of the race may not be so great as we, in our present state of ignorance of the aptitudes of particular persons for particular situations, are prone to believe.

But secondly, On the principle that activity of the faculties is the fountain of enjoyment, it may be questioned whether additional motives to the exercise of the whole faculties in harmony with the moral and intellectual powers, and consequently greater happiness, are not conferred by leaving men (within certain limits) to regulate the talents and tendencies of their descendants than by endowing each individual with the best qualities, independently of the conduct of his parents.

On the whole, there seems reason to conclude that the actual institution by which both good and bad qualities* are transmitted is fraught with higher advantages to the race than the abrogation of the law of transmission altogether, or than the supposed change of it, by which bad men should transmit good qualities to their children. The actual law, when tested by the moral sentiments and the intellect, appears, both in its principles and in its consequences, beneficial and expedient. When an individual

sufferer, therefore, complains of its operation, he regards it through the medium of his lower faculties alone; his selflove is annoyed, and he carries his thoughts no further. He does not stretch his mind forward to the consequences

*In using the popular expressions "good qualities" and "bad qualities," do not mean to insinuate that any of the tendencies bestowed on Man are essentially bad in themselves. Destructiveness and acquisitiveness, for example, are essential to human welfare in this world, and, when properly directed, produce effects unquestionably good; but they become the sources of evil when they are ill directed, which may happen either from moral deficiency or from intellectual ignorance.

which would ensue to mankind if the law which grieves him were reversed. The animal faculties, when acting by themselves, regard nothing beyond their own immediate interest, and do not discern even that correctly; for no arrangement that is beneficial for the race would be found injurious to individuals if its influence in regard to them were distinctly traced. The abrogation, therefore, of the rule under which they complain would, we may presume, bring greater evils, even upon themselves, than its continuance.

On the other hand, an individual sufferer under hereditary pain, in whom the moral and intellectual faculties predominate, and who believes in the principle and consequences of the institution of hereditary descent as now explained, will not murmur at them as unjust. He will bow with submission to a law which he perceives to be fraught with blessings to the race when it is known and obeyed; and the very practice of this reverential acquiescence will diminish, in a great degree, the severity of his misfortune. Besides, he will see the door of mercy standing widely open, and inviting his return: every step which he makes in his own person towards exact obedience will remove by so much the organic evil transmitted through his parents' transgression; and his posterity will reap the full benefit of his more dutiful observance.

It may be objected to the law of hereditary transmission of organic qualities that the children of a blind and lame father have frequently sound eyes and limbs. But, in the first place, these defects are generally the result of accident or disease, occurring either during pregnancy or posterior to birth; so that, the normal elements of the defective organs being present in the constitution, the imperfections are not transmitted to the progeny. And secondly, Where the defects are congenital or constitutional, it frequently happens that they are transmitted through successive generations. This is sometimes exemplified in blindness, and even in the possession of supernumerary fingers or toes. One reason why such peculiarities are not transmitted to all the offspring probably is, that, in general, only one parent is defective. If when the father, for instance, is blind or deaf, the mother is free from that imperfection, her influence may extend to, and modify the result in, those of her progeny who take their constitutions chiefly from her.

If the mental qualities transmitted to offspring be to some