A mother has no longer any mere sordid anxieties for the future of her children.

They may indeed turn out better or worse; they may disappoint her highest hopes; such anxieties as these are a part of the mingled pleasure and pain which goes to make up the life of mankind.

But at least she is spared the fear (it was most commonly the certainty) that artificial disabilities would make her children something less than men and women: she knows that they will live and act according to the measure of their own faculties.

In times past, it is clear that the 'Society' of the day helped its Judaic god, and the 'Man of Science' of the time, in visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children.

How to reverse this process, how to take the sting out of heredity, has for long been one of the most constant cares of the thoughtful men amongst us.