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Chapter 2—The Strength of Inherited Tendencies
Insatiable Cravings Transmitted
—Both parents transmit their
own characteristics, mental and physical, their dispositions and ap-
petites, to their children. As the result of parental intemperance,
children often lack physical strength and mental and moral power.
Liquor drinkers and tobacco users may, and do, transmit their insa-
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tiable craving, their inflamed blood and irritable nerves, to their chil-
dren. The licentious often bequeath their unholy desires, and even
loathsome diseases, as a legacy to their offspring. And as the chil-
dren have less power to resist temptation than have the parents, the
tendency is for each generation to fall lower and lower.—
Patriarchs
and Prophets, 561
.
To the Third and Fourth Generation
—Our ancestors have be-
queathed to us customs and appetites which are filling the world
with disease. The sins of the parents, through perverted appetite, are
with fearful power visited upon the children to the third and fourth
generations. The bad eating of many generations, the gluttonous and
self-indulgent habits of the people, are filling our poorhouses, our
prisons, and our insane asylums. Intemperance in drinking tea and
coffee, wine, beer, rum, and brandy, and the use of tobacco, opium,
and other narcotics, has resulted in great mental and physical degen-
eracy, and this degeneracy is constantly increasing.—
The Review
and Herald, July 29, 1884
.
The Legacy to Oncoming Generations
—Wherever the habits
of the parents are contrary to physical law, the injury done to them-
selves will be repeated in the future generations.—
Manuscript 3,
1897
.
The race is groaning under a weight of accumulated woe, be-
cause of the sins of former generations. And yet with scarcely a
thought or care, men and women of the present generation indulge
intemperance by surfeiting and drunkenness, and thereby leave, as
a legacy for the next generation, disease, enfeebled intellects, and
polluted morals.”—
Testimonies for the Church 4:31
.
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