Vermont farmer. [volume] (Newport, Orleans County, Vt.) 1870-1877, 1876-12-08
Moral Heritage of Children.
BY MRS. AMELIA L. BARR.

"Who shall deliver up man from his
ancestors 2" is a question Of more awful i'm
portance than can be well estimated for Just as
surely as the original sin Of our 6rst parents
still produces its deplSrable consequences, 30
surely is every child the heir, to a greater
or less extent, Of its parents cultivated vir-
tues and vices. The laws under which chill
dren inherit the physical peculiarities or dis
eases and the mental aptitudes of the ances-
tors, ought to be subjects of profound inter-
est to all who take upon themselves the tre-
mendous responsibility of parenthood but
even these are ofless Importance than the
nditions-inexorable but just-which en-
tail the consequences Of the sins Of the ia
Their upon the children even unto the third
and fourth generations.
For though the physical likeness varies,
and inherent intellectual or moral qualities
are not transmitted, an acquired or habitual
vice will rarely fail to leave its trace on
some or all of the offspring. Say that the
father himself, bora of sober parents, be-
comes voluntary and habitual drunkard,
the cultivated habit in him becomes the over
towering instinct when transmitted to the
child. NJ. Morel indeed says, aud no writer
has entered more deeply into the subject,
that he "never saw the patient cured of this
propensity when tendencies TO drink were
derived from the hereditary prcdisposition
given to him by his parents"
Not only drunkenness, but anger, glut-
tony, theft, pride. the passion for gambling,
etc., are distinctly under tho same laws of
hereditary transmission. Our insane asy-
lums, hospitals and jais are full Of wretched
souls who may rightfully complain, "lrom
our fathers cometh our misery"
The Borgias were all more and more in-
famous. The atrocities Of the Farnese fam
lily are not fit to name. The Medic were
frightfully alike in their wickedness. The
Viscontis were all cruel and vindictive. All
the family of Charles the Fourth, Of Ger
many, were misers. Pride, obstinacy, false.
ness and iudicious blindness marked all the
Stuarts; and in the local history Of any
place, the personal knowledge of any OBJ
servant person will be able to continue the
list indefinitely.
The sacred writings abound with the rec
ognitions Of moral heritage. 1t was a most
said, Wherefore ye be witnesses unto your
selves that We are the children of them that
killed the prophets, fill ye up then the meas
ure of your fathers" but cutting as it was,
they were compelled to accept it as a logical
conclusion. In modern times the two Col
eridges, father aud son, are a terrible exam
pie of the power which voluntary cultivat-
ed vice has over the offspring.
The elder Coleridge deliberately produced
in himself the passion for the stimulant of
opium. The craving was systematically
grati6ed until will became utterly powerless,
not only in the control of this passion, but in
all the other relations of l!fe His son-that
marvellous boy, Hartley Coleridge-endowed
with the most magnificent gifts of reason
and Imagination, inherits with them his ia =
theirs love OF stimulants, but in him it was
from the earliest youth mania, an ungov-
ernable impulse. Even when scarcely out
Of childhood his brother thus writes of him
"A certain infrmity Of will has already
shown itself-he yields as it we're uncon-
sciously to slight temptations, slight in
themselves, and slight to him, as if swayed
by a mechanical impulse apart from his
voltion." lie was we'll aware of his own
weakness, and in intervals Of soberer feelings
most bitterly and pitifully deplores his in-
firm will-thus he writes in one of his
books
"Ohl woiul impotence Of weak resolve,
| Recorded rashly 10 tho writer's shame
Days pass away, and timo's large orbs revOlve,
And every day beholds me still the same,
TIL of neglected purpose loses aim,
Aud hope becomes a fat, UNDECIDED lie."
And the "marvelous boy" the brilliant
youth, lowered with every mental gift, per-
ished before his prime; the victim of pas.
sions, and of failings Of will and conscience
distinctly inherited, and which nothing but
the strength which cometh by prayer and
communion which God could have conquer
ed.
There is no injustice in this inheritance Of
parental sins any more than in the original
moral faint. The rule works for good as
we'll as evil If the parents do we'll shall it
not be we'll with the children ? Ii we do i'll
let them remember "sin and punishment
grow out Of one STEM" The subject is 50
solemn and important that eau do nothing
but direct parents attention to it aud quote
in conclusion, the dictum of that profound
Psychologist Burdach: "Heritage has in
reality more power over our constitution and
character than all influences from without
whether moral or physical" OF course this
does not include the influence Of the gospel