|
You
|
|
|
Destiny
|
Beauty always accompanies economy of structure and movement, indeed it is the expression of this economy. All improvement
in speed and directness of movement must have been adaptive, must have given the individual an advantage in gaining food,
escaping enemies, or in some way making its evolutionary position more secure.
Beauty and intelligence are the outcome of different phases of the same forces of organic evolution. What is good we call
beautiful.
A graceful carriage, a springing, vigorous, rhythmical step, a sweet breath, good teeth, clear complexion, a pleasant musical
voice, a handsome shapely neck, red lips, a well-developed chin, and clear, bright, animated eyes are indications of health.
The ideals of human excellence, of character, morality, beauty, intelligence, health, sanity, and energy that we teach our
young men and women cause them to seek these things in their mates.
The ideals are thus bred into the physical and mental constitution of the race. They become its most priceless possession.
And because this stream of germ plasm is almost inviolable, it comes about that when a race has attained to health and character
by means of natural selection, these virtues can be bequeathed to succeeding generations until the river of life empties into
the ocean of eternity.
In order to maintain the equality of the sexes in numbers and quality, nature has ordained that in each succeeding generation,
the elements of human character shall cross the line of genesis.
The history of the world reveals that fact that men do not transmit their characteristics to their sons. Neither do women
transmit their characteristics to their daughters.
No great man has ever yet appeared who did not have a mother who embodied in her character the elements which made him successful.
No woman has ever astonished the world with her genius who was not the offspring of a father who possessed the germs of the
same genius.
Differences in environment and education have had their influence, but as far as the law of inheritance furnishes a cause
of observed effects, there are no exceptions to this rule.
In any apparent exception where a son has followed in the footsteps of his father with success, it will be found that the
mother possessed the elements of character that made the success possible.
In all ages, men have mourned the fact that their sons were unable to follow in their footsteps, while the current theology
and social customs of society have denied this success to their daughters, because the occupation in which those talents would
shine have not been considered within "woman's sphere."
And so, after decades of misuse and suppression, the talent has appeared in the grandson. In the same way, talented boys inheriting
from sensitive and refined mothers the grace which would have made them brilliant musicians, accomplished painters, and incomparable
poets have been compelled to adopt commercial pursuits for which they were utterly unfitted.
Good examples of this transference of acquired development to the opposite sex in the third generation are found in the pedigrees
of trotting horses. The highly trained stallion George Wilkes does not appear as the sire of any of the very fast mares, but
he appears ten times as the sire's sire and as many more times as the sire's grandsire.
Martin Kallikak believed that blood would not tell; or, if it did tell, it would not tell on him. Martin's dramatic history
and the history of his germ cells, his blood, have been related in a little book called "The Kallikak Family" by Dr. Henry
H. Goddard, Director of the Juvenile Research Bureau of the State of Ohio and formerly Superintendent of the famous School
of Feeble-Minded at Vineland, New Jersey.
Martin Kallikak was a young soldier of the Revolutionary War. His ancestry was excellent. But one wild night up the Hudson
River, Martin forgot his noble blood. In this night of dissipation, he met a physically attractive, feeble-minded girl. The
result of that meeting was a feeble-minded boy. This boy grew up and married a woman of whose mentality Doctor Goddard could
secure no record. But she was evidently of the same ilk. They produced numerous progeny with a large percentage of feeblemindedness.
These grew up lazy, thriftless, shiftless, trifling, thieving people. Marrying into their own kind, another generation of
the same general character came upon the human scene. This has gone on now for six generations.
However, on the other side of the canvas, blood has painted a different and wonderful story. Later in his life, Martin married
a young Quaker woman of splendid talents and heroic ancestry. It seemed that this line of children simply could not turn out
badly in any environment. Indeed, like all blood, good or bad, it made its own environment. This line has given us 496 descendants.
All have been normal people. As Doctor Goddard says, they have given us descendants of the highest respectability and social
usefulness including among their members "doctors, lawyers, judges, educators, landholders, traders, and men and women prominent
in every phase of social life." The last one on the chart is now a man of wealth and influence.
Nobody ever had to build asylums, penitentiaries, reformatories, or special schools for this line of blood. The other line
has cost society hundreds of thousands of dollars to restrain their evil tendencies and care for their feeble minds and bodies.
One line has torn down, the other has built up; one line has reaped, and the other has scattered; one has contributed nothing
but wickedness and woe, while the other has blessed the earth with beauty and achievement.
Thus we find the difference in individual lives to be largely measured by the degree of intelligence which they manifest.
It is a greater intelligence that placed the animal in a higher scale of being than the plant, the man higher than the animal;
and we find this increased intelligence is again indicted by the power of the individual to control modes of action and thus
to consciously adjust himself to his environment.
It is this adjustment that occupies the attention of the greatest minds and this adjustment consists in the recognition of
an existing order in the Universal Mind, for it is well known that this mind will obey us precisely in proportion as we first
obey it.
As we increase in experience and development, there is a corresponding increase in the exercise of the intellect—in the range
and power of feeling, in the ability to choose, in the power of will, in all executive action, in all self-consciousness.
The success of the hour may belong to the strongest fighter, but the future belongs to him who knows best how to adapt himself
to the most precarious condition of life.
The gigantic animals that lived at remote geological periods have vanished, but many of their weaker contemporaries still
exist.
Choose what improvements you wish in a flower, a fruit, or a tree and by crossing, selection, cultivation, and persistence
it can be fixed irrevocably.
Choose any trait of character, be it honesty, fairness, purity, industry, or thrift, by giving all that is implied in healthful,
environmental influence, you can cultivate it and fix it there for life.
Heredity will, of course, make itself felt, and as in the plant under improvement, there will be certain strong tendencies
to reversion, but persistence will win.
If you are highly ambitious and are devouring biographies of this great genius or that powerful captain of industry for cues
to success, it will be well to take an inventory of the endowments given the great genius during the formative period of his
life.
Cosmic Intelligence continues to experiment and develops other coordinated systems into higher and higher complex organizations.
Experiment after experiment is tried and different special organizations developed, each one trying to keep the spark of life
burning within itself to its highest degree by continually adjusting itself to the changed conditions of its environment.
The protoplasm or cell perceives its environment, initiates motion, and chooses its food. These are evidences of mind. As
an organism develops and becomes more complex, the cells begin to specialize, some doing one thing and some doing another,
but all of them showing intelligence. By association, their mind powers increase.
Whereas in the beginning each function of life and each action is the result of conscious thought, the habitual actions become
automatic or subconscious in order that the self-conscious mind may attend to other things. The new actions will, however,
in their turn become habitual, then automatic, then subconscious in order that the mind again may be tree from this detail
and advance to still other activities.
Human love has as many elements and shades as there are phases of human consciousness and interest. It includes emotional
enthusiasm, tenderness, and devotion; aesthetic attractiveness, appreciation, and satisfaction; intellectual stimulation,
approval, and respect; social acquaintance, companionship, and comradeship, and the happiness which is the result of self-denying
consideration and sacrificing service.
This means that self-consciousness is increasing, expanding, growing, developing, and enlarging. It increases and develops
because it is a spiritual activity. We multiply our possession of spiritual things in proportion to our use of them. All material
things are consumed in the using. There is a diametrically opposite law governing the use of the spiritual and the material.
The intellectuals are not necessarily the great benefactors of mankind because as a rule their noble ideas have not the emotion
to propel them to success. You undoubtedly know many who have been too dumb to recognize opposition and so accomplished what
our intellectuals said "could not be done."
Combine proper, intelligent, well-born emotion with an idea and it is like combining energy to mass—it goes forth with direction
and force to bless the world with its goods. Deny the idea, however nobly conceived, this mysterious quality and it is likely
to die at birth.
You are made up of millions of minute living creatures each possessing mind and intelligence. These are controlled by group
minds, and these group minds are controlled by the subconscious mind, which in turn is controlled in the thought which enters
it. It is thought which makes the adjustment. This is the process of crossing the human with the germ of the Divine. This
is the infusion of a higher type. This is the final goal of human destiny!
|