majority of mothers do not watch for such traits. It seldom occurs to
them that they should thus watch. Why not bring the subject to the
consideration of young women "beforehand," when, being assembled in
companies, they are easy of access? It is too late when they are
scattered abroad, and burdened each with her pressing family duties.
"Forewarned is forearmed."

Some are of the opinion that the badness which comes by inheritance
cannot be changed. This is equivalent to believing that there is no
help for the evil in the world. Unworthy and vicious parents are
continually transmitting objectionable traits to their children, who
in turn will transmit them to theirs, and so on to the end of time.
Shall we fold our hands, and resign ourselves to the prospect, while
our educators go on ignoring the whole matter, and leaving those who
might affect a change ignorant that it is in their power to do so?

"But," says one, "the children of those people who thought so much
about education, and who started with model theories, behave no better
than other people's children." This may be true, and still prove
nothing. "Those people" might not have thought wisely about education.
Their model theories might not have been adapted to the various
temperaments often found in one family. Their children might have been
exceptionally faulty by nature; unsuspected inherited traits may have
developed themselves, and interfered with the workings of the model
theories. The failure of "those people" shows all the more the need of
preparation given "beforehand," and given by those who make the
subject a special study, just as the professor of history, or
mathematics, or natural philosophy, makes his department a special
study.