I proceed to examples and developments of the doctrine, chiefly insisted upon in the former letter. I draw them chiefly from Mr Combe, premising, that they exactly coincide with views which you cannot but remember to have heard me advance, before I had read his book on the constitution of man. It is a law of the animal creation, that not only the natural but even the acquired qualities are transmitted by parents to their offspring; and man, as an organized being, is subject to laws similar to those which govern the organization of the lower animals. ‘Children,’ says Dr Pritchard, ‘resemble in feature and constitution both parents; but I think more generally the father.’ Changes produced by external causes in the constitution and appearance of the individual are temporary; and, in general, acquired characters are transient, terminating with the individual, and having no influence on the progeny. The mental development of the Circassian race is known to be of the highest order. The nobles of Persia are children of Circassian mothers, and they are remarkable, in that country, for their mental and corporeal superiority over the other classes. Every one acquainted with the condition of our southern slaves, well understands the obvious fact, that the mulattoes are much superior, in quickness and capability of acquiring and retaining knowledge, to the negroes. The Indian half-breeds are remarkable for the immediate ascendency, which they acquire One of the most fertile sources of human misery, then, arises from persons uniting in marriage, whose tempers, talents and dispositions do not harmonize. If it be true that natural talents and dispositions are connected by the Creator with particular constitutions of the parents, it is obviously one of his institutions, that these constitutions should be most seriously taken into the calculation in forming a compact for life. The Creator, having formed such ordinances in the unchangeable arrangements of nature, as to confer happiness, when they are discovered and observed, and misery, when they are unknown or unobserved, it is obviously our best wisdom to investigate and respect them. If individuals, after this truth reaches their conviction should go on, in imitation of the common example, to form reckless connexions, which can only eventuate in sorrow, it is obvious that they must do so either from contempt of the effects of this influence upon At the first aspect of this subject three alternatives are presented, one of which, it should seem, must have a determining power upon the offspring. Either, in the first place, the corporeal and mental constitution, which the parents themselves inherit at birth, are transmitted so absolutely, as that the children are exact copies of the parents, without variation or modification, sex following sex; or, in the second place, the inherent qualities of the father and mother combine, and are transmitted in a modified form to the offspring; or, thirdly, the qualities of the children are determined jointly by the constitution of the parents, and the faculties and temperaments, which predominated in power and energy at the particular period, when the organic existence of the child commenced. If these views are correct, and if a man and woman about to marry, have not only their own domestic happiness but that of five or more human beings depending on their attention to considerations essentially the same as the foregoing, how differently ought this contract to be viewed from the common aspect, which it presents to persons assuming its solemn stipulations! Yet it is astonishing, to what extent pecuniary and other minor considerations will induce men to investigate and observe the natural laws; and how small an influence moral and rational considerations exert upon this most important of all earthly connexions. I cannot forbear, under this head, quoting entire another passage from the author, from whom I have substantially drawn many of the foregoing observations. ‘Rules, however, are best taught by examples; and I shall, therefore, proceed to mention some facts that have fallen under my own notice, or been communicated to me from authentic sources, illustrative of the practical consequences of infringing the law of hereditary descent. ‘A man, aged about fifty, possessed a brain, in which the animal, moral, and knowing intellectual organs were all strong, but the reflecting weak. He was pious, but destitute of education; he married an unhealthy young woman, deficient in moral development, but of considerable force of character; and several children were born. The father and mother were far from being happy; and, when the children attained to eighteen or twenty years of age, they were adepts in every species of immorality and profligacy; they picked their father’s pockets, stole his goods, and got them sold back to him, by accomplices, for money, which was spent in betting and cock-fighting, drinking, and low debauchery. The father was heavily grieved; but knowing only two resources, he beat the children severely as long as he was able, and prayed for them; his words were, that “if, after that, it pleased the Lord to make vessels of wrath of them, the Lord’s will must just be done.” I mention this last observation, not in jest, but in great seriousness. It was impossible not to pity the unhappy father; yet who that sees the institutions of the Creator to be in themselves wise, but in this instance to have been directly violated, will not acknowledge that the bitter pangs of the ‘In another instance, a man, in whom the animal organs, particularly those of Combativeness and Destructiveness, were very large, but with a pretty fair moral and intellectual development, married, against her inclination, a young woman, fashionably and showily educated, but with a very decided deficiency in Conscientiousness. They soon became unhappy, and even blows were said to have passed between them, although they belonged to the middle rank of life. The mother, in this case, employed the children to deceive and plunder the father, and, latterly, spent the produce in drink. The sons inherited the deficient morality of the mother, and the ill temper of the father. The family fireside became a theatre of war, and, before the sons attained a majority, the father was glad to get them removed from his house, as the only means by which he could feel even his life in safety from their violence; for they had by that time retaliated the blows with which he had visited them in their younger years; and he stated that he actually considered his life to be in danger from his own offspring. ‘In another family, the mother possesses an excellent development of the moral and intellectual organs, while, in the father, the animal organs predominate in great excess. She has been the unhappy victim of ceaseless misfortune, originating from the misconduct of her husband. Some of the children have inherited the father’s brain, and some the mother’s; and of the sons whose heads resembled the father’s, several have died through mere debauchery and profligacy under thirty years of age; whereas, those who resemble the mother are alive and little contaminated, even amidst all the disadvantages of evil example. ‘On the other hand, I am not acquainted with a single instance in which the moral and intellectual organs predominated in size, in both father and mother, and whose external circumstances also permitted their general activity, in which the whole children did not partake of a moral and intellectual character, differing slightly in degrees of excellence one from another, but all presenting the decided predominance of the human over the animal faculties. ‘There are well-known examples of the children of religious and moral fathers exhibiting dispositions of a very inferior description; but in all of these instances that I have been able to observe, there has been a large development of the animal organs in the one parent, which was just controlled, but not much more, by the moral and intellectual powers; and in the other parent, the moral organs did not appear to be in large proportion. The unfortunate child inherited the large animal development of the one, with the defective moral development of the other; and, in this way, was inferior ‘Another organic law of the animal kingdom deserves attention; viz. that by which marriages betwixt blood relations tend decidedly to the deterioration of the physical and mental qualities of the offspring. In Spain, kings marry their nieces, and, in this country, first and second cousins marry without scruple; although every philosophical physiologist will declare that this is in direct opposition to the institutions of nature. This law holds also in the vegetable kingdom. “A provision, of a very simple kind, is, in some cases, made to prevent the male and female blossoms of the same plant from breeding together, this being found to hurt the breed of vegetables, just as breeding in and in does the breed of animals. It is contrived, that the dust shall be shed by the male blossom before the female is ready to be affected by it, so that the impregnation must be performed by the dust of some other plant, and in this way the breed be crossed.”’ Such considerations, I hope, will induce you to exercise cautious examination of this subject, if either of you should ever be placed in circumstances to contemplate assuming the duties of the wedded life. If you do not, you will have cast the pursuit of happiness upon the die of chance at the very outset of your career. Allow me, before I dismiss the book, from which I have already so liberally quoted, to extract one passage more, touching the application of the natural laws to the practical arrangements of life. ‘If a system of living and occupation were to be framed for human beings, founded on the exposition of their nature, which I have now given, it would be something like this. ‘1st. So many hours a day would require to be dedicated by every individual in health, to the exercise of his nervous and muscular systems, in labor calculated to give scope to these functions. The reward of obeying this requisite of his nature would be health, and a joyous animal existence; the punishment of neglect is disease, low spirits and death. ‘2dly. So many hours a day should be spent in the sedulous employment of the knowing and reflecting faculties; in studying the qualities of external objects, and their relations; also the nature of all animated beings, and their relations; not with the view of accumulating mere abstract and barren knowledge, but of enjoying the positive pleasure of mental activity, and of turning every discovery to account, as a means of increasing happiness, or alleviating misery. The leading object should always be to find out the relationship of every object to our own nature, organic, animal, moral, and intellectual, and to keep that relationship habitually in mind, so as to render our acquirements directly gratifying to our various faculties. The reward of this conduct would be an incalculably great increase of pleasure, in the very act of acquiring knowledge of the real properties of external objects, together with a great accession of power in reaping ulterior advantages, and in avoiding disagreeable affections. ‘3dly. So many hours a day ought to be devoted to the cultivation and gratification of our moral sentiments; You will study, and obey the moral laws of the universe, of which you are a part, because you are moral beings, and because obedience to these laws constitutes the tie of affinity between you, the higher orders of being and the divinity. You will respect them, because it is the glory of your nature, that you alone, of all creatures below, are morally subject to them. Laying out of the question their momentous sanctions in the eternal future, you must be aware, that the Creator has annexed pleasure to obeying them, and pain to their violation as inevitably, as gravity belongs to matter. One would think, it must be enough to determine the conduct of a being, who laid claim to the character of rational, to know, that no art nor dexterity, that no repentance nor return to obedience, can avert the consequences of a single violation of these laws; and that no imaginable present good can counterbalance the future misery, that must accrue in consequence. In regard, for example, to the practice of the most common and every day duties, who can doubt the truth of the trite adage, honesty is the best policy? This is, in effect, no more than saying, that the moral laws of the universe are constituted upon such principles, as to make it every man’s interest to obey them. It is as certain, that they are so constituted, as that fire will burn, or water drown you; and when you understand this constitution, it marks the same want of a sane mind to violate them, as to be unable to keep out of these elements. Yet the greater portion of the species do not constantly act upon a full belief in this hackneyed maxim. They think apparently, that they can in some way obtain the imagined advantage of dishonesty and evade the connected We hold the man insane who should leap from a high building upon the pavement, or attempt to grapple with the blind power of the elements. But it is scarcely the subject of our remark, that the multitude about us, in the most important, as well as the minute concerns of life, live in habitual recklessness or violation of the organic and moral laws; and yet we certainly know, that whoever infringes them is as sure to pay the penalty, as he who madly places himself in opposition to the material laws. I can never present this astonishing and universal blindness in too many forms of repetition, if the effect is to bring you to view these two species of folly in the same light. The reason clearly is, that in too many instances, men take no pains to acquaint themselves with these laws, and their bearing upon the constitution of man; or, deceived by the clamors of the inclinations, and the illusions of present pleasure and advantage, when balanced with future and remote penalties, they commit the infractions, and hope, that between the certain pleasure and the distant When I speak of these unchangeable laws, as emanations from the divine wisdom and goodness, as transcripts of the divine immutability, and as being the best of all possible arrangements, not to be superseded, or turned from their course by the wisest of beings, you will not understand me to bear upon the consoling and scriptural doctrine of providence. I firmly believe, and trust in it; not, however, in the popular view. It would not increase my veneration for the Almighty, to suppose that his laws required exceptions and variations, to meet particular cases; nor that they would call for frequent suspensions and changes, to provide for contingencies not foreseen at the commencement of the mighty movements. Such are not the grounds of my trust in the wisdom and goodness of the Supreme Being. I neither desire, nor expect any deviation of laws, as wise and good as they can be, in their general operation, to meet my particular wishes, or those of the friends most dear to me. I expect, that none of the powers of nature will change for me; I encourage no insane hopes, that things will forego their tendencies to meet my conveniences or pleasures. Prayer is a duty equally comforting and elevating; but my prayers are not, that these fixed laws of the divine wisdom may change for me; Piety, established upon a knowledge of these laws, and a respect for them, and associated with veneration for their author, is rational, consistent, firm and manly. It seeks, it expects nothing in the puerile presumption, that the ordinances of a code, fitted for the whole system of the Creator, will be wrested to the wants of an insect. In docility and meekness it labors for conformity to those ordinances; in other words, to the divine will. It violates no principle, and calls for the exercise of no faith, that is repugnant to the dictates of common sense, and the teaching of common observation. Piety, founded on such views, abides the scrutiny of the severest investigation. No vacillation of the mind from varying fortunes, no questionings of unbelief, doubt and despair, can shake it. It rests firmly on the basis of the divine attributes. It holds fast to the golden chain, the last link of which is riveted to the throne of the Eternal. Thus it seems to me indispensable, as a pre-requisite If, then, you would give yourself to the patient study of the natural sciences, that you may gain reputation and the ability to be useful, much more earnestly will you study regimen, exercise, temperance, moderation, cheerfulness, the benefits of a balanced mind, and of a wise and philosophic conformity to an order of things, not a tittle of which you can change, that you may be resigned, useful and happy. All knowledge, which cannot be turned to this account, either as relates to yourselves, or others, is useless. Innumerable counsels, in relation to your habits, your pleasures and pursuits, your studies, your tastes and modes of conduct, your beau idÉal of natural and moral beauty, your standard of dignity and worth of character, |