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 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 seem to me to have been inattentively noted, its
laws 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 less to do with the matter and can
not annul 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
pusheth. In one of what Dr. Holmes 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—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 a man’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
Bythynia 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 appears
to have contributed an element. Intellectually he is a contemporary of
John Dryden, whom naturally he reveres as the greatest of poets. There
was another who inherited his handwriting from his great-grandfather,
although trained to “the Spencerian system” that he tried vainly to
acquire. Furthermore, his handwriting followed the same order of
progressive development as that of his great-grandfather. At the age
of twenty he wrote exactly as that ancestor did at the same age, and,
although at forty-five his chirography was nothing like what it was
even ten years before, it was accurately like his great-grandfather’s
at forty-five. Discovery of some old letters showed him how his
great-grandfather wrote, and accounted for the dissimilarity of his own
handwriting to that of any known member of his family, or his teachers.
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 kind and degree of natural intellect, are
_not_ transmissible, is illogical. 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 if it were not true 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 inefficient to perpetuate their inefficiency. Our entire
system of charities is open to the same objection; it preserves 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 several kinds of “inmates” 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, solitary reign.