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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Home Ideals (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 66. Fascinating Possibilities.
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Fascinating Possibilities.
The babe is a composite, immediately and most, of his parents. He is more than either, because he is all of both. He is all that they both are, plus their undeveloped possibilities, their dormant powers, and minus their prejudices and superstitions. He is the essence of all the preceding generations. More strains come together, and blend, and interact, in him than in either father or mother, or in any ancestor, for he includes them all. Two lines are heading up anew in this new babe.
The possibilities of the new life are endless and fascinating. The changes of transmission run into unceasing variety. Some part of what has lain asleep in father and mother may wake up into vigorous life in the child. A power or trait that has been dormant through one, or many generations, may come out again, and come out with more vigour than before.
What has been alert and active in parents may be dormant in the child. Or, it may reappear in a much more decided form, or in a less decided. The good may be better, or not so good; the bad worse, or less bad; the strength stronger, or less so; the weakness more marked, or less; the talent be of a finer sort, or not so fine; the inclination or mood more pronounced, or not so much so.
Then the new combination of the union of the two parents may work out new characteristics in the child. There may come just the combination that lifts talent up into the realm of genius. What has been a steady plodding trait in the father may, in combination with the blood of the mother, reappear as a brilliant inspirational gift. So geniuses are born of commonplace people. And so, on the other side, commonplace persons are born of those marked by genius.
Then, too, what has been held in check by the parents may reappear, or disappear. Through the restraint of conventionality, or by years of hard self-discipline, or by God's grace working with the discipline, or by any two of these, or all three combined, much that is undesirable may have been restrained in the parents' life. Any of this may reappear in the child in equal or less or greater vigour; or may disappear. A marvel of possibility is this child whom we have brought into life. And a great problem he is, for endless, keen, patient study, and for unceasing steady prayer.