Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/113

Rh than in simple self-sacrifice. Yet the matter is so obvious when pointed out as to suggest later a different sort of retort—namely, that it was scarce worth pointing out. Only, as it happens that this truly obvious matter has been grievously overlooked, as the teacher of this essentially true and therefore demonstrable lesson has been rebuked for inculcating mere self-seeking, it is tolerably clear that the lesson was very much needed.

Let us consider how obviously true it is, however, as he presents it. Take, for instance, the matter on which I touched in my last—viz., the consideration of the known laws of heredity. "When we remember," says the clear, calm teacher of our time, "how commonly it is remarked that high health and overflowing spirits render any lot in life tolerable, while chronic ailments make gloomy a life most favorably circumstanced, it becomes amazing that both the world at large and writers who make conduct their study should ignore the terrible evils which disregard of personal well-being inflicts on the unborn, and the incalculable good laid up for the unborn by attention to personal well-being. Of all bequests of parents to children the most valuable is a sound constitution. Though a man's body is not a property that can be inherited, yet his constitution may fitly be compared to an entailed estate; and, if he rightly understands his duty to posterity, he will see that he is bound to pass on that estate uninjured if not improved. To say this is to say that he must be egoistic to the extent of satisfying all those desires associated with the due performance of functions. Nay, it is to say more. It is to say that he must seek in due amounts the various pleasures which life offers. For beyond the effect these have in raising the tide of life and maintaining constitutional vigor, there is the effect they have in preserving and increasing a capacity for receiving enjoyment. Endowed with abundant energies and various tastes, some can get gratifications of many kinds on opportunities hourly occurring; while others are so inert, and so uninterested in things around, that they can not even take the trouble to amuse themselves. And, unless heredity be denied, the inference must be that due acceptance of the miscellaneous pleasures life offers conduces to the capacity for enjoyment in posterity; and that persistence in dull, monotonous life by parents diminishes the ability of their descendants to make the best of what gratifications fall to them."

All this is clear and obvious enough when thus pointed out; though the very passage in which Mr. Spencer here so clearly shows that to be happy, so far as by due regard of personal well-being one can make one's self happy, is a duty, has been selected for abuse as though he taught simply this—seek to gratify self in every available way. The kind of rebuke justly passed on those who in the search for pleasure, in mere self -gratification, ruin their health, lose happiness, become morose, gloomy, and misanthropic, lose taste for all pleasures lower as well as higher, and hand on to their children and their children's