HEREDITY, A FACT
=A critic answered.=--During a lecture in a western city the author gave
his audience an opportunity to ask questions and state their objections
to his views on heredity. One of his auditors declared that he did not
believe in heredity. He was then asked whether he believed in the
improvement of mankind.
“Certainly,” was the objector’s reply.
“How do you suggest that this improvement may be accomplished?”
“I believe in ideal environment.”
“So do I; but, I also believe in the agencies of ideal heredity and the
grace of God.”
“I don’t know anything about your last agency and I do not believe in
your first; but I do believe in ideal environment.”
“Do you understand farming?”
“I am a farmer.”
“Very good; suppose you have a field you wish to plant in corn. You have
access to two cribs. One is filled with nubbins; the other with large,
shapely, well-matured ears of corn. From which of the two cribs would
you select your seed corn?”
“I would select from the one containing the better corn.”
“But, you have just stated that you do not believe in heredity.”
“Now, Professor, you are talking about corn.”
“Yes, I am telling you how to improve corn by the intelligent control of
heredity. Suppose you have no stock, but you wish to begin raising
stock. Your father has some scrub stock and some pedigreed stock. He is
willing for you to select your breeding stock without cost. From which
of the two grades would you select?”
“I would certainly select from the pedigreed class.”
“But you have informed me that you do not believe in heredity.”
“Now you are talking about hogs, cattle and horses.”
“Yes, I am trying to explain to you that in the improvement of our
domestic animals we are wise enough to use the agency of heredity.
Suppose you had a daughter of marriageable age and she is entertaining a
marriage proposition from each of two
[Illustration: A WILD ROSE.--Nature Gave us This.]
[Illustration: AMERICAN BEAUTY ROSE.--Good Heredity and Environment
Produced This.]
young men. She comes to you for your fatherly advice and counsel. You
know the records of the two young men. One is rich and rotten, the son
of a corrupt politician. The other young man has good parents, a clean
record, all the physical, mental and moral qualities of a real man, but
he is poor. Nine times out of ten you would advise your daughter to take
the fellow that is rich and rotten. You have good corn sense, good hog
sense, good cow sense and good horse sense; but you have mighty poor
son-in-law sense.”
When my audience ceased applauding, I held a book up before them and
allowed it to represent a ten-acre field to be planted in corn. I
assumed that all parts of the field were to have the same quality and
richness of soil, uniform rain-fall and sunshine, and the corn to
receive uniform cultivation. In this event the corn in all parts of the
field would have the same environment. Then I said to my audience, “If
there is nothing in heredity and you plant one-half of this field in
corn selected from nubbins and the other in corn selected from large,
shapely, full matured ears, the side of the field planted in nubbins
will produce as fine corn as the other side.”
If there is nothing in heredity, and all in environment, the offspring
from the vicious cow will be as docile and as safe as the offspring from
the gentle cow; the offspring from the scrub horse with a six-minute
record can be trained to trot as fast as the colt whose parents had a
record of a mile in less than two minutes; and the children of the
degenerate class will be as healthy and well developed, as intellectual
and moral as the children of the normal parents.
=Heredity in plant life.=--There is operative in every sprig of grass,
weed, vegetable, shrub, and tree two agencies--heredity and environment.
What they are and what they are to be are wholly determined by these two
agencies. In the past fifty and seventy-five years we have doubled the
size, variety and quality of our vegetables and fruits. Nature gave us
the wild rose, bearing a small bloom with five petals; nature and man
have produced the large, shapely, fragrant, beautiful rose of the yard
and garden, bearing from fifty to one hundred petals to the bloom.
Nature gave us the knotty wild strawberry; nature and man have produced
the large, luscious strawberry of the market and table. If our
cultivated and highly developed vegetables and fruits had been left to
the careless farmer, or in their wild state, with their heredity and
environment without intelligent control, a Keifer pear and an Alberta
peach would not have been produced in a million years.
=Heredity in animal life.=--In the last fifty and one hundred years
intelligent man, through the wise control of heredity and environment,
has produced the
[Illustration: A WILD STRAWBERRY.--Nature Gave us This.]
[Illustration: CULTIVATED STRAWBERRY.--Good Heredity and Environment
Produced This.]
popular breeds of fine poultry; the Pointer and Setter dogs; the Poland
China, Berkshire and Duroc hogs; the Southdown and Merino sheep; the
Durham, Jersey and Holstein cattle; Percheron, Coach and Hambletonian
horses. Nature gave us the long-horned, crooked-limbed, brindle-haired
wild cow; nature and man have produced the Durham. Nature gave us the
wild horse that could trot at best a mile in six minutes and, when well
broken, was worth twelve dollars and a half; nature and man have
produced the Hambletonian that makes a mile in less than two minutes and
sells for twenty thousand. Nature gave us the razor-backed,
long-snouted, acorn-splitting Arkansas hog; nature and man have produced
the beautiful grunter of the barnyard and the performing pig of the
circus. The careless breeder or unaided nature could not have produced
these results in centuries of time. Man proudly claims the honor of
making these improvements. He maintains great stock shows and stock
journals, visits foreign countries and pays fabulous prices that he may
constantly improve his stock. He secures large appropriations from
government revenues with which to prevent the spread of hog cholera
among his hogs and Texas fever among his cattle. So great is man’s
interest in these improvements that nearly all men take one or more
agricultural, bee, poultry and stock journals and their wives take
poodle dog journals. Why this interest? Money and pleasure.
=Money and pleasure more valuable than manhood.=--We have seen what man
has accomplished among the vegetables, fruits and domestic animals, now
let us study his wisdom in the application of these agencies in the
human family. When we study man in relation to the world about him, his
physical, mental and moral possibilities, and from Revelation, we get a
glimpse of what the human race ought to be. In both sacred and profane
history we find some specimens of noble, ideal manhood. On the farm and
in the shop, behind the counter and at the bar, in congress and in
senate, on the platform and in the pulpit, we find some, who, by
inheritance, environment, personal effort and the grace of God, have
become examples of ideal manhood. But look at men in the mass. How few
examples of perfect manhood do you find in a crowd of ten thousand men?
Look at the enervated and stunted fathers; the nervous and sickly
mothers; the puny and weakly children; the poorly developed bodies and
dwarfed minds. Why should sixty-seven per cent. of our children be
physically or mentally defective at birth? Why should one hundred and
sixty-five children out of every thousand born in country places and two
hundred and twenty in the cities, die in their first year? Ninety-five
per cent. of the well-cared-for lower animals are perfect at birth and
ninety per cent. grow to old age and are rarely sick. Why should crime,
insanity, feeble-mindedness and epilepsy have increased three hundred
per cent. during the last twenty years? Why this remarkable improvement
among vegetables, fruits and domestic animals, and this appalling
degeneracy among men? Love of money and pleasure explains the one; man’s
fallen condition explains the other. Dollars and pleasure in one;
sacrifice, manhood and womanhood in the other.
=Heredity versus environment.=--If there is nothing in heredity, and all
in the environment, given the same environment, the offspring from the
vicious horse will be as easily broken and be as safe as the offspring
from the docile horse; the offspring from the horse that can make a mile
at best in six minutes can be trained to trot as fast as the offspring
whose parents could make a mile in less than two minutes.
My contention is that the same intelligence that has produced the
beautiful fragrant rose, the splendid vegetables, the luscious fruits
and our present improved varieties of domestic animals, can produce
similar improvements in the human family.
=Heredity applied by the early Romans.=--In the early history of Rome,
custom and law made it a special honor to be a Roman mother. She was
surrounded by examples of courage, bravery, strength, power, heroism
and purity. Special homage was shown her on the streets, at the arena,
and when viewing the marching victorious armies. Such treatment and such
environment made it possible for the Roman mother to become a real help
in making Rome the mistress of the world. Had this courtesy, gallantry,
manly attention, respect and reverence for girlhood, womanhood, wifehood
and motherhood continued, Rome might never have fallen. Have we the
gallantry, courtesy, respect and reverence for womanhood as in former
days? A quarter of a century ago it was indeed a rare thing that a man
would be so thoughtless as to smoke or swear in the presence of a woman;
now it is a very common occurrence.
=Plato’s views.=--Plato, a heathen philosopher, born more than two
thousand years ago, who never heard of the Bible or the Savior, made a
careful study of the laws of heredity, and for the improvement of men
suggested laws that would do honor to our day. In his Republic he
suggested that parentageable married people be prohibited from the use
of wine. Wine included all alcoholic drinks. He also suggested that the
inferior classes should be restricted in marriage and that marriage
should be encouraged among the superior classes. Under the teaching of
Plato, Lycurgus, in his reign, assuming that children were more the
property of the nation than of their own parents, sought to have all
children well born. In two hundred years that small nation is said to
have produced twenty-eight of the master minds of the world.
=Genius is hereditary.=--Aristotle’s father was a scholar and a
philosopher. Beecher’s father was a scholarly preacher. William Pitt’s
father at the age of twenty-seven was at the head of the English
government. Lord Bacon’s father was a great scholar and statesman.
Darwin was the product of several generations containing a number of
geniuses.
The Bach family of musicians in Germany is a fine example of musical
heredity. Among them were nineteen musicians of eminence. Fifty-seven of
their names are found in the Dictionary of Music. At family reunions
there were counted as many as two hundred and fifty church organists and
choir leaders. The genius for music appears to be as easily transmitted
as that for art or militarism. There appears to be only a very few
exceptions among the great musical geniuses.
Cæsar, Alexander, Wellington and Hannibal seem to have inherited a
genius for war. Napoleon Bonaparte’s Corsican mother, before his birth,
accompanied her husband to the field of war, exposing herself to
deprivation and danger, and being elated and thrilled by every victory.
When a child, he showed the military spirit. As a man of eighteen and
twenty he was a failure and attempted suicide. When twenty-three he was
given a chance to quell a raging mob in Paris, and crushed it in his
first effort. From that time until England chained him he conquered
everything before him.
From the days of the Crusades to the war with Spain we find the Lees
were military leaders. Cromwell and Grant appear to be exceptions to the
rule.
=Max Jukes.=--Vice, as well as virtue, runs in families. Max Jukes was
born in 1703. Both he and his wife were born of inferior parents. He was
a drinking man and seemed to delight in breaking law. His wife was a
common prostitute. We have identified and studied eleven hundred and
three of his descendants. One hundred and twenty-six were thieves and
murderers and spent several years in the penal institutions, ninety
female prostitutes, one hundred and forty-five drunkards; two hundred
and eighty-five were viciously diseased and four hundred had either
consumption, epilepsy, or were feeble-minded. Eleven hundred and three
were delinquents--not one a good citizen. They cost New York a million
and a quarter dollars.
=Jonathan Edwards.=--Jonathan Edwards was born in 1720. He and his wife
had splendid heredity. They were well educated. They were converted to
Christ in childhood. We have identified and studied thirteen hundred
and ninety-four of their descendants. We find thirteen university
presidents; one hundred and twenty-three college and university
professors; thirty-two eminent authors; ninety-six physicians; over two
hundred ministers; four hundred successful business men; one vice
president; mayors of large cities, U. S. senators and congressmen;
ministers to foreign ports; only one left a stain on the family
record--Aaron Burr who fought a duel with Alexander Hamilton.
=The potency of heredity.=--Suppose that the environments of these two
families could have been reversed and their heredity left the same,
could you then have written the figures after Max Jukes that we have
written after Edwards, or vice versa? No real student of sociological
conditions believes that we could. Environment certainly had much to do
with both of these families; but all students of heredity believe that
in these families heredity was as great as, or even a greater factor
than, environment. The dependent and delinquent descendants of Max Jukes
were the products of bad heredity, bad environment and the rejection of
Christ; the great and good descendants of Edwards were the products of
good heredity, good environment and the grace of God.
=Bible and heredity.=--In the Old and New Testament, the writers of nearly
every book appear to recognize the potency of heredity. We can refer to
only a few of them here as proof of the fact of heredity. God told
Sampson’s mother that she must drink no strong wine and eat no impure
food.
David gives a most excellent statement of the results of good heredity:
“But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them
that fear him and his righteousness unto children’s children.” The word
fear, as applied in this case, means perfect obedience prompted by
respect, reverence and love for one in authority.
The Jews, who could trace their lineal descent to Abraham, often boasted
of their inherited superiority over other Jews and people of other
nations.
Paul, writing to Timothy, said, “When I call to remembrance the
unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother
Lois, and thy mother Eunice,” etc. In this statement Paul accounts, in
part at least, for the strong faith and beautiful Christian character of
Timothy, on the basis of heredity.
David explains the sins of his life as being due, in part at least, to a
bad heredity. “I was shapen in sin and in iniquity did my mother
conceive me.”
=Iniquities of fathers visited upon their children.=--In Exodus 20:5, we
find a most remarkable statement of the hereditary results of obedience
to law and of disobedience. “I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous
[Illustration: RESULTS OF “PERSONAL LIBERTY.”--The young man whose
picture appears on this page was studied by the author. His sister who
died at the age of five months was afflicted like himself. The initial
of their lives occurred during the drunken debauch of their father.]
[Illustration: PROTECTED.--The above illustration of highly bred, highly
trained and highly protected animals, showing a cow valued at $13,000,
hogs valued at over $4,000 each and a horse at $5,000, serves as a
striking contrast to the illustration on the opposite page.]
God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the
third and fourth generations of them that hate me, and showing mercy to
thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.” This is a much
misunderstood passage. God does not arbitrarily choose to force a
punishment upon an innocent child whose father ignorantly or viciously
violated law any more than he breaks the leg or neck of a man who
accidentally or with suicidal intent falls from the top of a building.
God has wisely placed all men under a variety of laws. The laws are all
planned for man’s good. If we keep all law, we develop manhood and
womanhood. By the agency of heredity we transmit to our children the
possibility of manhood and womanhood superior to that which we
inherited. If we constantly violate law, we acquire physical, mental and
moral degeneracy and transmit to our posterity defective conditions. In
this way God has planned for each succeeding generation to become
superior to the preceding one.
The statement is made that the iniquities of fathers are visited upon
their children unto the third and fourth generations, and that
“righteousness” is shown unto “thousands of them” (generations).
Why did God limit his first statement to the third and fourth
generation? Because there is no fifth generation of continuous and
unbroken iniquity. Here are two modern proofs of the truthfulness of
this ancient text.
=A modern proof.=--Two thousand erring girls were interrogated with
reference to the sobriety of their parents. Seventy per cent. had either
drunken fathers or drunken mothers, or both. In one state penitentiary
the author found seventy-two per cent. of the inmates had either drunken
fathers or drunken mothers, or both. Recent investigations in one of the
state reformatories for women show eighty-five per cent, had either
drunken fathers or mothers, or both. Twenty-two per cent. of the
feeble-minded, the insane and the epileptic had the initials of their
lives to take place during a drunken debauch.
Here is a husband and wife; both are habitually under the influence of
alcohol. Suppose their children follow their example and marry
companions addicted to strong drink, and the children of the next
generation follow the example of their parents and marry companions
addicted to strong drink, and this is continued, what will be the
result? There will be no fifth generation. In the first generation might
have been found a daughter in the house of shame, a son in the chain
gang of crime, a feeble-minded child, an epileptic, or one or more
alcoholics. As a result of four generations of consecutive drunkenness,
degeneracy would become so great as to result in complete sterility.
=Another proof.=--In every institution for the feeble-minded are to be
found inmates who have the “Hotchinson notched teeth,” “crowfoot tracts”
in the palate and throat, certain marks on the body--scientific proofs
that such are congenital syphilitics. Some ancestor, two or three
generations gone by, lived an immoral life, became infected with a
vicious disease and transmitted the degenerative influences down the
line to where it ended in complete degeneracy.
=Who is responsible?=--Is this a punishment from God upon innocent,
helpless children? No. God is in no sense responsible for it. Is nature?
No. Who is responsible? Men who sow their wild oats and boast of their
“personal liberty” to do as they please. Have God and nature any part in
this? Yes. God and nature in infinite interest, mercy and love for the
unborn millions who would be blighted with inconceivable degeneracy and
suffering, should they be born of such degenerate parents, say, “We have
given these descendants four generations in which to prevent further
degeneracy by marrying into pure and sober families, by reformation or
by redemption,” and since they have not availed themselves of these
restorative and redemptive means, reproduction must cease.
=Morbid heredity and bad environment.=--Bad environment and bad heredity
explain the presence of every convict in our penal institutions and
every inmate in the asylums. Laws and political administration that
tolerate, regulate and encourage strong drink and social immorality, the
two chief causes of degeneracy, and the parents who indulged in these
iniquities, are largely responsible for these thousands of defective and
delinquent beings who are crowding our asylums and penal institutions to
a dangerous and unsanitary overflowing.
Father, son and grand-son, uncles and cousins galore crowd these
institutions. Much of their mail is from relatives and bears the
postmark of a similar institution, showing that crime and insanity run
in families.
=Man’s development originally under two agencies.=--It is evident that God
originally placed man’s development under the intelligent control of
heredity and environment. If man had as wisely applied these agencies to
his own improvement as he now does to the improvement of the vegetable
and animal kingdoms, he would have developed to the highest possible
physical, mental and moral attainments.
=His fall.=--Man’s present condition of hereditary and acquired degeneracy
clearly reveals that somewhere in human history he has thrown himself
out of harmony with physical, mental and moral laws governing his
well-being. The record of man’s fall as given in Genesis is at least the
figure of a great fact in human history. Man’s fall involved the
violation of some law or laws vitally related to his physical, mental
and moral natures.
=Need of a third agency.=--The results of his fall were transmissible. In
his fallen state he was not able to use heredity and environment to
their normal capacity. His fall resulted in abnormal heredity and
environment. Without an additional agency fallen man was incapable of
recovery. Hence his need of redemption and the Redeemer. Now man has at
his command his intelligence, his will and the grace of God, by which he
may improve himself, improve his environment, and as a result of his
improved physical, mental and moral condition, he may transmit to his
posterity the possibilities of manhood and womanhood superior to what he
himself inherited. Just to the extent that man has received a good or a
bad heredity, keeps or violates law, accepts or rejects the grace of
God, just to that extent does he recover or degenerate, create a good or
a bad environment, and will transmit a good or a bad heredity to his
posterity.
=Greatest blessing of parents.=--What is the greatest blessing of
parentage? “Riches,” is the answer. Lots of fools think that. The
greatest blessing of parents to their children is a good heredity. What
a child is at birth he has received largely from his parents. What he
receives at birth largely determines his future.
=Greatest blessing of society.=--What is the greatest blessing of society
to a child? It is a good environment. Parents can form only a part of
their child’s environment. Society as a whole furnishes the environment
of a child. No individual, no class of men, no lawmaker, no
municipality, county, state or nation has the shadow of a moral right to
place by vote or official act, or permit by passive toleration a
lascivious picture, a vile book, a questionable resort, a place of vice,
a saloon or a gambling den that may lead a boy or girl to ruin. Whoever
assumes that right is an enemy to the social and moral well-being of
society. God’s greatest gift to men is salvation through His Son. Bad
heredity and environment are the only difficulties in the way of all
men’s accepting Christ. The complete effects of any one or two of these
agencies are impossible without the normal application of the other. No
one can wholly take the place of the other two, and no two can wholly
take the place of the other one. These three agencies should be ever
active in every life.
=Three agencies necessary.=--You might as well try to make a triangle out
of two sides as to try to produce physical, mental and moral perfection
in man by the use of environment and the grace of God, when the
individual has inherited little or no physical, mental and moral basis
for development. If a child has received ideal heredity, but is left
without educational opportunities and compelled to grow up in an immoral
atmosphere, never entering a Sunday school or church, it would be
impossible for him to develop scholarship or Christian character. If one
has good heredity and good environment and leaves the grace of God out
of his life, he is not what a man should be and will fall short of the
true object of life.
=Is there a remedy?=--If man’s present degeneracy had its origin in the
violation of law; if the evil physical, mental and moral effects have,
in some measure, been transmitted from one generation to succeeding
ones, until all men are more or less hereditarily degenerate; is there a
remedy, or are we the subjects of fate? Must each succeeding generation
continue to inherit a possible increase of degeneracy as we have done in
the past?
=Relation of the three agencies.=--Nature and man create environment. The
tendency of nature is to furnish only good environment for man. Man has
it in his power to help or to hinder nature. The more depraved man is
the more he hinders nature and produces for himself and others a bad
environment. If hereditary degeneracy could be eliminated from the
race, there would be no immoral environment. Bad environment is produced
by degenerate men. Degeneracy is both inherited and acquired. Inherited
degeneracy indulged, and acquired degeneracy are both transmissible. If
it were possible, under present conditions, for one never to violate a
law as a result of God’s grace and his own volition he could not
directly and personally transmit tendencies towards evil, and he would
transmit his inherited tendencies towards evil in a less degree than he
inherited them. Even with ideal heredity, environment and the grace of
God, one or more generations could not entirely overcome the bad effects
of all preceding generations.
=The need of Christ.=--Each individual is the sum total of all the
influences, good and bad, of all preceding lineal generations. The
inherited good and bad antagonize each other and are modified by
environment and the grace of God. If the good predominates, the bent of
that individual will be toward the good, and vice versa. His approach to
perfection will be determined by his heredity, his environment and by
his relation to Christ. Since all men always will be the sum total of
all the influences of the past, they will always need the Christ. There
will always be enough temptations in the world to develop the heroic in
man.
=The race can be improved.=--But it is reasonable that through the ideal
application of these three agencies one generation can to a very marked
degree overcome the evil effects of the past and transmit less
degeneracy than it received. If each individual would embrace the grace
of God, create for himself and others an ideal environment, this process
continued would ultimately give us a race free from the present serious
condition of physical, mental and moral degeneracy. If this conclusion
is not practical, logical and correct, then science and revelation fail
to give us a remedy for present race degeneracy. If this is the correct
solution of our physical, mental, social and moral problems, all
education, legislation, religious and personal efforts to bring about
race regeneration will continue to fail until the three-fold scientific
and scriptural gospel of good heredity, =good environment and the grace
of God for every child=, finds its proper place in all our personal
efforts, teaching, administration, legislation, and preaching.