to the whole world—thus immensely enhancing the sum total of human enjoyment. Hence the close connection of parents and children, brothers and sisters, and other relations. But closeness of connection, where evil and not good prevails, causes increase of pain instead of pleasure,—necessarily produces suffering instead of enjoyment. If therefore the parent be evil, or give way to evils at times, the children must suffer in a greater or less degree, because that near and powerful influence of one over the other, which was intended for blessing, is, by the parent's fault, turned into a source of grief and pain. It would, plainly, be very unjust, in such cases, to throw the blame upon the general law and upon the Lawgiver who established it, rather than upon the parent who perverts the benign influences of that law into injurious ones. Parents and children are necessarily associated most closely together, and therefore must be affected by the state and conduct of each other: for good if both are good,—for evil, if both or either is evil.
By the second class of diseases,—those that are common or general,—are meant those which nearly all children at the present day seem necessitated to pass through,—such as measles, whooping-cough, and some others. It certainly is a very remarkable thing, (if, despite its commonness, we can look at the evil in its real deformity), that the whole or a very large part of the human family should have to enter upon existence through these doors of disease—with these monstrous figures (as they might be represented) meeting and seizing us at the threshold. If the principle be a true one, that physical disorder comes from mental,—that disease is derived originally from evil, then would not
