Article October 7, 1972 Issue

What Have You Inherited?

HARRIETTE MELDRIM HILL

"It runs in the family." How often we hear someone say this— perhaps despairingly—in referring to some flaw of character or a bodily weakness!

The mortal concept of heredity asserts man to be a material organism whose characteristics are determined by genes transferred from human parents.

But what does Christian Science teach about man's origin? It rejects the material belief of heredity, stating that it is not a real law. In Science and Health Mary Baker Eddy declares, "Heredity is a prolific subject for mortal belief to pin theories upon; but if we learn that nothing is real but the right, we shall have no dangerous inheritances, and fleshly ills will disappear."^{Science and Health, p. 228;}