Well, on the other hand, if the child is born of delicate parents, but free from germs, it has, if carefully fed, nursed, and tended, a very excellent chance of growing up well. It is difficult to conceive of a child having germs of, say, consumption in its system and these lying latent or dormant until she is a certain age, and then springing suddenly into life after she has suffered from some exposure and caught cold in the chest. There are easier theories than this by far and away to account for the children of consumptive parents dying of the same disease in their later teens. Besides, that word “latent” may be convenient, but it is a shockingly unmeaning one. I remember my father buying for a good round sum a few grains of wheat that were said to have been in the grasp of a mummy for a thousand years. The wheat when sown grew most certainly. It may never have been in the hands of a mummy at all, but it _may_ have been. If so, it was surrounded by dead matter, it was hermetically sealed against any influence that could cause it to germinate. Life was latent or asleep. But in the human body germs have no chance of dorminating, for so constant are the changes, that everything is constantly getting shifted, and by the time a man or woman is fifty he or she may have used up a score of bodies.
However, there is this to be said concerning the children of consumptive parents: they are born delicate, and therefore far more likely to fall victims to the scourge than others.
May they grow out of this delicacy of constitution? Yes, and that is the question I am going to consider, but I must answer another one, and it is one, too, that strikes at the very root of sociality: should consumptive people, or those suffering from other so-called hereditary ailments, marry? I say, “No.” They are, if they do so, guilty of as great a crime as many a felon who leaves the dock with the dread sentence of the judge ringing in his ears. It is sad to have to answer the question in such seemingly cruel words, but nevertheless I believe I am doing my duty in giving that reply.
There are two ways in which a young woman can give herself to God in this world, and both are honourable. One is by marrying the man she loves if he be healthy in body and pure in mind—not else—and thus becoming Heaven’s own servant for the happy propagation of healthful species and the progress of the world; the other is by—if weakly—remaining celibate and devoting her time, her talents and energies to doing good to her fellow beings without hope of reward in this world. There is a charm about a woman like this (though foolish people may sneer at her as an old maid) that it is difficult to describe.