Page:About people (IA aboutpeople00well).pdf/72

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ABOUT PEOPLE.

circumstances overshadows us. The moment demands our yielding; but our inheritance raises our individuality into bristling prominence. We are prone to sarcasm; our grandfathers were; it is part of us; but the moment shows we should lay it aside. Which will conquer, the inherited or the educated individuality? Each has his own peculiar passion for pleasure, meanness, or extravagance, and the inherited and the educated must wrestle, step by step, until, by repetition and aggregation of results, the victory is settled forever on one or the other side of individuality. The evil effects of heredity can be lessened, not only from generation to generation, but from year to year, while its blessed influences can be strengthened. As science is eradicating hereditary disease, so is education working upon evil mental peculiarities; even now it is only cowardice that says: I have a miserable disposition, because my grandparents had

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