A WELL-KNOWN citizen of Ohio once discovered another man of the same
name exactly resembling him, and writing a "hand" which, including the
signature, he was unable to distinguish from his own. The two men
were unable to discover any blood relationship between them. It is
nevertheless almost absolutely certain that a relationship existed,
though it may have been so remote a degree that the familiar term
"forty-second cousin" would not have exaggerated the slenderness of the
tie. The phenomena of heredity have been inattentively noted; its laws
are imperfectly understood, even by Herbert Spencer and the prophets. My
own small study in this amazing field convinces me that a man is the
sum of his ancestors; that his character, moral and intellectual,
is determined before his birth. His environment with all its varied
suasions, its agencies of good and evil; breeding, training, interest,
experience and the rest of it--have little to do with the matter and can
not alter the sentence passed upon him at conception, compelling him to
be what he is.
Man is the hither end of an immeasurable line extending back to the
ultimate Adam--or, as we scientists prefer to name him, Protoplasmos.
Man travels, not the mental road that he would, but the one that he
must--is pushed this way and that by the resultant of all the forces
behind him; for each member of the ancestral line, though dead, yet
pusfaedi. In one of what Dr. Nolmes (Holmes, ed.) calls his "medicated
novels," _The Guardian Angel_, this truth is most admirably and lucidly
set forth with abundant instance and copious exposition. Upon another
work of his, _Elsie Venner_--in which he erroneously affirms the
influence of circumstance and environment--let us lay a charitable hand
and fling it into the fire.
Clearly all one's ancestors have not equal power in shaping his
character. Conceiving them, according to our figure, as arranged in line
behind him and influential in the ratio of their individuality, we shall
get the best notion of their method by supposing them to have taken
their places in an order somewhat independent of chronology and a little
different from their arrangement behind his brother. Immediately at his
back, with a controlling hand (a trifle skinny) upon him, may stand his
great-grandmother, while his father may be many removes arear. Or
the place of power may be held by some fine old Asian gentleman who
flourished before the confusion of tongues on the plain of Shinar; or by
some cave-dweller who polished the bone of life in Mesopotamia and was
perhaps a respectable and honest troglodyte.
Sometimes a whole platoon of ancestors appears to have been moved
backward or forward, _en bloc_ not, we may be sure, capriciously, but in
obedience to some law that we do not understand. I know a man to whose
character not an ancestor since the seventeenth century has contributed
an element. Intellectually he is a contemporary of John Dryden, whom
naturally he reveres as the greatest of poets. I know another who has
inherited his handwriting from his great-grandfather, although he has
been trained to the Spencerian system and tried hard to acquire it.
Furthermore, his handwriting follows the same order of progressive
development as that of his greatgrandfather. At the age of twenty he
wrote exactly as his ancestor did at the same age, and, although at
forty-five his chirography is nothing like what it was even ten years
ago, it is accurately like his great-grandfather's at forty-five. It was
only five years ago that the discovery of some old letters showed
him how his great-grandfather wrote, and accounted for the absolute
dissimilarity of his own handwriting to that of any known member of his
family.
To suppose that such individual traits as the configuration of the
body, the color of the hair and eyes, the shape of hands and feet, the
thousand-and-one subtle characteristics that make family resemblances
are transmissible, and that the form, texture and capacities of
the brain which fix the degree of natural intellect, are _not_
transmissible, is illogical and absurd. We see that certain actions,
such as gestures, gait, and so forth, resulting from the most complex
concurrences of brain, nerves and muscles, are hereditary. Is it
reasonable to suppose that the brain alone of all the organs performs
its work according to its own sweet will, free from congenital
tendencies? Is it not a familiar fact that racial characteristics are
persistent?--that one race is stupid and indocile, another quick and
intelligent? Does not each generation of a race inherit the intellectual
qualities of the preceding generation? How could this be true of
generations and not of individuals?
As to stirpiculture, the intelligent and systematic breeding of men and
women with a view to improvement of the species--it is a thing of the
far future, It is hardly in sight. Yet, what splendid possibilities it
carries! Two or three generations of as careful breeding as we bestow
on horses, dogs and pigeons would do more good than all the penal,
reformatory and educating agencies of the world accomplish in a thousand
years. It is the one direction in which human effort to "elevate the
race" can be assured of a definitive, speedy and adequate success. It
is hardly better than nonsense to prate of any good coming to the race
through (for example) medical science, which is mainly concerned in
reversing the beneficent operation of natural laws and saving the
unfittest to perpetuate their unfitness. Our entire system of charities
is of, to the same objection; it cares for the incapables whom Nature
is trying to "weed out," This not only debases the race physically,
intellectually and morally, but constantly increases the rate of
debasement. The proportion of criminals, paupers and the various kinds
of "inmates" of charitable institutions augments its horrible percentage
yearly. On the other hand, our wars destroy the capable; so thus we make
inroads upon the vitality of the race from two directions. We preserve
the feeble and extirpate the strong. He who, in view of this amazing
folly can believe in a constant, even slow, progress of the human
race toward perfection ought to be happy. He has a mind whose Olympian
heights are inaccessible--the Titans of fact can never scale them to
storm its ancient reign.