MOSES [A 3 ] By Michel Angelo DANIEL WEBSTER [43] CONTROL OF HEREDITY A STUDY OF THE GENESIS OF EVOLUTION AND DEGENERACY ILLUSTRATED BY DIAGRAMS AND TYPES OF CHARACTER BY CASPER LAVATER REDFIELD [37] MONARCH BOOK COMPANY CHICAGO PHILADELPHIA COPYRIGHTED 1903 BY CASPER L. REDFIELD ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PREFACE. Travelers tell us that monkeys will watch men around a camp fire, and that as soon as the men leave, the monkeys will occupy their places, warming themselves till the fire goes out. The mon- keys can appreciate the warmth coming from the fire, but they do not know enough to keep it up by piling on more wood. Much less do they know how to start a fire when they want it. If we should assume these monkeys sitting around a fire and engaged in evolving a theory of combustion, we would have a par- allel to those biologists who are engaged in trying to give us a chemical formula for heredity without having the least idea of how to manipulate the forces of evolution so as to originate any desired line of development, or to maintain it for succeeding gener- ations when the advantageous variation has been originated by accident. Knowledge that carbon unites with oxygen in certain definite proportions during combustion is both interesting and use- ful, but its usefulness is secondary to the usefulness of knowing how to build a fire when wanted, and to maintain and control it when it is built. Selection has been an instrument by which breeders have, in a few generations, vastly improved our domestic animals, but con- fessedly selection, as applied to the lower animals, is not applicable to civilized man. In the preparation of the following pages it has been my object to provide a simple and practical process of light- ing and controlling the fires of evolution, particularly in their appli- cation to man. The evolution of man is essentially the evolution 4 PREFACE. of intellect, and given a process by which the intellectual powers may be developed from generation to generation, we may leave it to our more intelligent posterity to find ways and means for devel- oping themselves along any desired lines. The process of develop- ing the intellectual powers of future generations is, however, but one branch of a general principle involving all lines of evolution, and this branch is so associated with the other branches that devel- opment along one line involves development along all lines. In demonstrating this principle of evolution I have paid par- ticular attention to the genesis of intellectual power, and the proofs adduced show that men of great intellects are by no means abnormal products, but are the result of natural laws working along easily understood lines. The reason why such men as Aristotle, Cuvier, Darwin and Franklin are rare in the history of the world is shown to be because the antecedent conditions for the evolution of such men have been unknown and have arisen fortuitously. With these conditions known, and practically every man being capable of ful- filling his share of them, it should not be difficult to raise the intel- lectual powers of future generations to a plane vastly above that of the present day. It may seem like a bold proposition to tell a man that he may cause his children to be born with greater or less intelligence as he chooses, but I believe that those who will read the following pages will see that this is true. If a few parents are induced to intelligently endow their children with better brains and better bodies than they would have done by the operation of mere chance, then I shall feel amply repaid for whatever trouble I have taken to explain that which has been many times stated but which has been persistently mis- understood. C. L. REDFIELD. Chicago, 111., December, 1902. CONTENTS. PAGE INTRODUCTION .' 17 Kinds of heredity Great facts of heredity In- fluences affecting heredity Results of early marriages Mistakes of good intentions Removing the curses of civilization Regulating marriages Modern conditions and requirements. CHAPTER I. INHERITANCE, VARIATION AND SELECTION 25 Examples by oak trees Three-legged bitch Mare Basto Hornless cattle Kelleia Colburn Three-fingered Man Three nipples Scalp moving Blushing Left- handed Discussion of examples. Telegony: Quagga colt Horse "Camel" Mules Cecil's remarks Day's comments Hairless bitch Polled heifer Chocolate-colored ewes Various animals Red- haired son Discussion. Atavism : Pointer bitch Fox-terrier Setter-spaniel Malay fowls Essex pigs Double tooth Lame man. Partial Transmission : United toes Cancer Acacia Discussion. Inheritance by sex: Secondary sexual characters Trotting horses Sporting dogs Sheep and goats Gout- Hairless women Insanity Consumption Skin disease. Inheritance at corresponding ages. Examples: Dar- win's rules Tachygenesis. Selection: Examples from pigs Methodical selec- tionUnconscious selection Natural selection Discussion. 5 6 CONTENTS. PAGB In-and-in breeding: Used for fixing characters Evil effects of. Prep o tency : Defined Males usually prepotent Chamoise sheep. Growth. CHAPTER II. THEORIES OF HEREDITY AND VARIATION 48 Heredity is self-evident Variation demands explan- ationVariation defined as applying to characters Con- genital and acquired characters Variations existing at birth are congenital. Assigned causes of congenital variation: Climate and environment Ancestral use and disuse Unlike parents- Views of Aristotle Inherited mutilations Lamarck's laws. Weismann's theory: Cells Multiplication of cells- Conjunction of cells Germ cells and somatic cells Pro- pagation by conjunction of cells Continuity of the germ plasm Germ cells protected from exterior influences Neo- Darwinians and neo-Lamarckians Conflict between their theories Practical necessity of knowledge on the subject. CHAPTER III. BASIS OF INVESTIGATION ,59 The problem stated Non-functional characters Func- tionally active organs Organs compared Effect of func- tional activity Functional capacity Use-inheritance means the inheritance of acquired functional capacity The brain as a functional organ selected for investigation. Deduction from Weismann's theory: Law of proba- bilities Extent of variation Relative fertility of classes Result of different degrees of fertility Present condi- tions show that the lower classes produce more rapidly than WASHINGTON [38] LINCOLN [31] GRANT [28] GEN. ROBERT E. LEE [51] ARISTOTLE [A 3 ] CONTENTS. 7 PAGB the higher classes The consequence according to Weis- mann's theory Testimony of the nineteenth century Parisian skulls. Deduction from the theory of use-inheritance: Educa- tion of successive generations Testimony of Greece, Rome and modern times Revival of learning Eminent men in different centuries Fig. i. One hundred great men England and Scotland United States Inventions an index to mental power. Comparison of Deductions: Objections to the evi- dence of use-inheritance Weismann's statement. CHAPTER IV. BASIS OF INVESTIGATION, Continued .74 Origin of great men: Sons of prominent men Re- lated to inferior men Cromwell. Use and Disuse: Biological meaning Average use Normal use Amount of use per ancestor Functional activity and time as the factors of use Physical maturity Physical training Physical disuse Growth of brain Diagram, Fig. 2 Growth of functional capacity extends beyond physical growth Mental capacity at different ages Hypothetical community Diagram of body and brain capacity, Fig. 3 Formula for inheritance Recapitulation of second deduction from use-inheritance. CHAPTER V. STANDARD OF COMPARISON 83 Hall of Fame : Men chosen Why especially ex- amined. Formation of Standard Scale: Tabulation from a genealogy Divisions of the scale, Table i Extremes Birth-ranks Sub-divisions of extremes of the scale. Scale Compared: Records from Ireland, Scotland and 8 CONTENTS. PAGE Scandinavia Tables II, III and IV Age of Reproduction at different periods Law of probabilities Fame not com- mensurate with mental ability. CHAPTER VI. HALL OF FAME MEN 93 Ancestry of Beecher. Diagram for Beecher, Fig. 4 Ancestry of twenty-five men, Table V Birth-ranks of twenty-five men, Fig. 5 Fig 6 and its explanation College educated ancestors. Special cases : Webster Edwards Gray Whitney Franklin Audubon Farragut Irving Lee Washington Lincoln Channing Marshall Longfellow. General Discussion: Average birth-ranks for the group Average ancestral birth-rank, Table VI Fig. 7 Rearrangement, Table VII Extreme groups. CHAPTER VII. GREAT MEN OF ANCIENT TIMES 116 Method of Procedure and Estimating: Unknown dates Collateral evidence De Jussieu family Approxi- mating birth-ranks Estimating for different members of a family. Biblical characters : Joseph Moses David Solomon Rehoboam. Religious reformers: Confucius Lao-tse Buddha Mohammed. Ancient Greece: Laws of Lycurgus Age of marriage in Athens Alexander Philip of Macedon Aristotle Alcibiades Pericles Kings of Sparta Ptolemy Phila- delphus. Rome:Auistus Caesar and Caesarion Scipio Afri- canus Sulla Cato Pliny The Grecchi Claudius- Seneca. CONTENTS. 9 CHAPTER VIII. PAGE GREAT MEN OF MODERN HISTORY 133 Scope of Inquiry: Number wanted Who omitted Reasons for discrimination. Great Britain: Alfred the Great Bacon Shake- speare The Herschels The Darwins Fig. 8. Hunter Pitt Cromwell. Europe: Cnvier Lamarck Humboldt Napoleon. CHAPTER IX. GREAT MEN OF THE WORLD 142 The number of men included Classification Tables VIII to XXI Explanation of tables Comparison of men in different tables Quotation from Prof. Lombroso Comparison by numbers, Fig. 9 Men whose birth-ranks are partially or wholly unknown Impossibility of equal- izing tables Ten men from ten countries Evidence from one man alone. CHAPTER X. MENTAL APTITUDES 164 Hypothetical life history of man Relation of mental ap- titude to birth-rank Sample groups Discussion of groups Tabulation by birth-ranks and mental aptitudes Exam- ination of apparent exceptions Custom reversing natural aptitudes Generals Lee and Grant Channing, Cotton, Mather, Locke Eight poets compared as to character, and also as to mental ability Goethe, Pope and Schiller. CHAPTER XL EMINENT FAMILIES 178 Gallon's analysis Opportunities of sons of prominent families Supposed reason why they do not become eminent The Bach family The Carpzov family The Carnot IO CONTENTS. PAGK family The Bernouilli family The Coligny family The Livingston family The Dana family The Bliss family The college graduate Other American families The Conde family Eminence continued through younger branches Eminent men and their sons Cromwell Eng- lish aristocracy Why descendants of men raised to peerage do not maintain eminence Burke's peerage Primogeni- ture Difference between brothers Result of one genera- tion versus results of several generations. CHAPTER XII. RACES OF MEN 194 The plea for early marriages Galton's table of relative births in the same family Marrying ages of different classes Early reproduction and advantageous variation The Eskimos The Digger Indians The Fuegians The Patagonians Andaman Islanders The Bushmen The Hottentots The Australians The M'pongwes and Bor- mus The Moxos and Chiquitos The Acawoias The Polynesians The Egyptians The Aboriginal Tribes of India The Touaregs and Kabyles The Afghans The Chinese Review of the Different Tribes Results com- pared with Lamarck's laws. CHAPTER XIII. DEGENERACY 206 Degeneracy defined Experiments on rabbits Degen- erate children of parents who have suffered from sunstroke, sickness or accident Degenerate children of old parents Healthy and unhealthy development of parents Children of an old mother The "Ishmael" family, their character and their birth-ranks The "Juke" family Dugdale's con- clusions Crime and pauperism Genesis of degeneracy Sexual intensity. CONTENTS. 1 1 CHAPTER XIV. PAGE LOWER ANIMALS 217 Basis of comparison Size and activity of different animals Anthropoid apes : The orang-utan and chim- panzee Horses : English thoroughbreds American trotters Testimony of horse breeders Breeding from immature animals The fastest trotters in the world The greatest sires of speed Transmission by sex in horses Relation of age and training in sires Reproduction earlier in common than in blooded horses Cattle: Early breeding Birth-ranks of famous bulls Average for ordinary cattle Dogs and sheep Rabbits and squirrels ^Hibernat- ing squirrels The beaver Seals and deer The elephant and hippopotamus Guinea pigs White njice Common fowl Crows Parrots Bee Moth Coccus Ant. CHAPTER XV. REPRODUCTION, PUBERTY AND LONGEVITY 232 Lamarck's laws and their proof The factors of use, how combined Diagram of animals by the factor of age Proportion of life during which developing activity con- tinues Relative variations of time and activity Time a stimulus for mental activity The rise of races Time between generations increased by delay of puberty Puberty affected by climate and mode of life Age of puberty at different places Variations by latitude Adolescence a period of acute sexuality Early puberty caused by congenital acute sexuality Degenerate and luxurious classes come early to puberty Early reproduc- tion and length of life Length of life of different classes Longevity and mental aptitudes Relation of birth- rank to longevity Selection eliminated Longevity of different sons of the same family Longevity and birth- ranks of brothers and sisters Birtht-ranks and ex- 12 CONTENTS. PAGE pectancy Infant mortality Puberty delayed by late re- production Result of delayed puberty Races compared as to puberty. Practical considerations. CHAPTER XVI. EFFECT OF SEXUAL REPRODUCTION ^ 247 Reproduction as temporary disuse: Functional ac- tivity accompanied by waste and repair. Degrees of waste and repair Functional condition due to rate of repair Germ cell the epitome of the adult Divisions of germ cells equivalent to a condition of waste Repair of wasted germ cells Functional condition of germ cells and quality of repair Habit of repairing organs Cessation of cell divi- sions and repair is disuse Development and the length of time between periods of disuse. Immaturity: Sexual excesses and rapid cell divisions Immature seeds Immature germ cells and weak children Offspring of parents who are still growing Brain power vs. brain size The Incas. Inheritance at certain ages: Active and inert organs differently affected Initial velocity of development Per- sistence of a single advance or retrogression. Inheritance by sex: Relates to characters appearing after puberty Secondary sexual character of late brain development Transference of sexually developed charac- ters to the opposite sex Due to initial velocity From grandparent of one sex to grandchild of the opposite sex. Examples from Horses. CHAPTER XVII. MENTAL AND PHYSICAL RESULTS 257 Secondary sexual characters and intelligence: On- togeny of parent and offspring Functionally active and functionally inert characters Relation of the beard and CONTENTS. 13 PAGE mental powers to age at reproduction Reproduction by immature fathers Illustrations from various animals. Relation of Mental Power to Mental Aptitude: Power is the product of long-continued conditions Aptitude is a selected part of these conditions Mental power is the basis, and mental aptitude the characteristic of eminence Mental power transmitted to the same sex, mental aptitude to either sex Illustrations. Sterility: Natural and acquired sterility Causes of natural sterility Premeditated sterility and its remedy Increase of population The cycle of actions The domin- ating race of the future. Conclusion: Evolution and degeneracy Power of controlling them Results to be reached Closing remarks. APPENDIX 273 INTRODUCTION. "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away/' In such words man has been wont to blame Providence for the consequences of his own errors and ignorance. Happily this ignorance is being grad- ually brushed away and man is learning little by little that there are some ills for which he himself is responsible. If there is one thing more than another which we have been in the habit of charg- ing up against Providence it is the results of vicious or defective heredity, yet instead of being a mysterious dispensation of Provi- dence, heredity is the product of natural laws operating along certain prescribed lines. Instead of having a science of heredity our knowledge of the subject has consisted of a series of disconnected facts wholly inadequate to give us an intelligent idea of the processes of Nature. We have known that the children of white parents are white and that the children of colored parents are colored, but we have known little else. Laying the blame for disastrous results upon the shoulders of Providence is but one way of confessing this ignorance. KINDS OF HEREDITY. Heredity is of two kinds; first, Structural Heredity, which re- ' lates to the size, form and color of an organ without regard to the force or energy that may reside in it ; and second, Dynamical Her- - edity, which relates to the force, power or energy of an organ without regard to its size or form. Heretofore attention has been principally directed to structural heredity, and examples of the known facts and the theories relating 17 l8 INTRODUCTION. to them are given as a preliminary to the main work. This main work consists in tracing the genesis of dynamic heredity, and the facts revealed by this investigation give us a better understanding of the processes by which character is produced. THE GREAT FACTS OF HEREDITY. In considering the dynamical side of this question, the first and most important fact is that heredity is the product of two fac- tors, one of which is the length of time elapsing between genera- tions, and the other of which, is the degree of activity which char- acterizes the individuals of successive generations. These two factors bear the same relationship to heredity that length and breadth bear to area. No matter how great the length may be we cannot have great area if the breadth is small, and no matter how great the breadth, the area will still remain small if the length is small. In the same way we cannot have a high degree of hereditary development by time alone, nor by activity alone. To produce great development by hereditary action, both factors must be large in the parents, and to produce very great development both factors must be large for two or more generations. The second great fact is that each individual during his life undergoes certain physical and mental changes, and that those con- ditions which characterize parents at different ages are transmitted to the offspring which are produced at those ages. This is admira- bly exemplified in mental aptitudes, the children of youthful parents being strongly marked by the characteristics of youth, and the children of old parents being marked by the characteristics of age. The third great fact is that the average length of life tends to approximate twice the average age at which reproduction takes INTRODUCTION. 19 place. This is illustrated by the fact that as long as parents main- tain their health and vigor, the older they are at the time of repro- duction, the greater is the average length of life of their offspring. It is not necessary to recount here all of the facts set forth nor the corollaries to be drawn from them, but we will turn our attention to some of the processes by which the race has risen to its present plane, and to some of the processes by which it may be raised to still higher planes. INFLUENCES AFFECTING HEREDITY. In the early history of the race men grouped themselves into communities, and not having to fight for their lives against superior animals they perfected military organizations for the purpose of fighting each other. The young men joined these organizations, and the training they necessarily received developed them phys- ically and mentally. In communities like Greece and Rome it became customary for young men not to marry until after they had returned from the wars. Wars and the training for wars, there- fore, not only increased the activity of the individuals, but operated to delay reproduction until considerable development had occurred. The result of this we see in the fact that the most warlike races have been the most progressive races. In modern times the mili- tary training given by Germany not only develops her young men, but operates to delay the average age of marriage, and consequently the average age at which reproduction takes place. The result of this will be a rise in the average intelligence of the German people. Religious movements, from that of Moses down to that of the pestiferous charlatan who claims to be a re-incarnation, have each added to the intellectual activity of the community and consequently have been factors in human progress. The same may be said of 2O INTRODUCTION. agitations of the present day, strikes, anarchism, the stress of competition, athletics, all tend to increase the physical or mental activity of individuals and hence to develop the race generation by generation. RESULTS OF EARLY MARRIAGES. Even in communities in which there are many things operating to delay the age of marriage, there are individuals who marry early and who early in their lives produce children. These children of youthful parents are lacking in physical stamina and mental power. They are reckless, careless, sometimes vicious and fre- quently drift into drunkenness and crime. From this class comes the principal part of our criminals, paupers and prostitutes. The effects of debauchery result in defective children, and if continued for two or three generations result in a high degree of infant mortality or total extinction. The vices of civilized society, espe- cially strong drink and prostitution, operate to eliminate a portion of each generation, and this elimination affects the children of young parents much more than the children of old or middle aged parents. THE MISTAKES OF GOOD INTENTIONS. There are certain persons with good intentions, but sadly mis- taken, who would protect society against itself by prohibition, by the abolition of war, strikes, and competition, and by legal enact- ments calculated to preserve the life of each individual born. Let us go back a thousand years in time and assume that this Utopian condition had been brought into existence. There being no mili- tary necessities to take the youth to war and no stress of competition making it difficult to secure a living, the number of early marriages would have been greatly increased and the children of young parents would have outnumbered the children of middle aged parents. Now INTRODUCTION. 21 one of the effects of early reproduction is to endow children with intense sexual characteristics, and this results in the childrii of young parents being much more prolific than children of older parents. A few generations of this process, and the whole popula- tion would either have been children of young parents or descended from the children of young parents. Under these conditions the race would have sunk downward instead of rising upward, and the white man of to-day would have been at the level of the savage. Hence, rum, war, intrigue for power, competition, prostitution, and a large number of other vices considered the curses of civilization have in reality been the unconscious causes of progress. REMOVING THE CURSES OF CIVILIZATION. While these curses could not heretofore have been dispensed with without causing the destruction of civilization, now that we know the real cause of progress we can eliminate them and still progress faster than before. It being known that it is desirable to eliminate, or at least restrict, the early production of children, it is not necessary that we reach the desired end by first producing them and then laying traps by which they will exterminate them- selves through misery and suffering. If we are determined to continue the production of children from immature parents, it cer- tainly would be more humane to follow the ancient Polynesian custom of infanticide. Think of it! The youth to whom we would not intrust the training of a dog we intrust the production of human beings, and then wonder at the causes of pauperism and crime. REGULATING MARRIAGES. The legal age at which marriage may be contracted varies in different parts of the world from the age of ten to the age of twenty. In different parts of the United States these ages range 22 INTRODUCTION. from fourteen to eighteen. As a beginning toward a higher stand- ard, all marriages of men at less than twenty-one and of women at less than eighteen should be absolutely prohibited. To this should be added a graded marriage license fee so arranged as to discrim- inate against all marriages of men at less than twenty-five and of women at less than twenty-two. The existence of such a discrim- ination would be the most potent of influences in discouraging early reproduction by calling attention to the causes of mental degen- eracy. The moral influence would be greater than the legal restraint. With very early reproduction restricted to a few illegitimacies, two generations would see our pauper and criminal classes practi- cally extinct. The vices of intemperance and prostitution would also disappear much more rapidly than they would as the result of legal enactments, because these vices are practiced more by the children of young parents than by the children of old parents. This is particularly true in cases where early reproduction is continued for two or three generations. It may be argued that the restriction of early marriages would cause an increase of prostitution. It is possible, nay probable, that this would be the immediate result of such restriction, but this increase would be quickly followed by a much greater decrease as the children of older parents became more numerous. It may also be argued that the birth rate is now decreasing and that a restric- tion of early marriages would cause a further decrease amounting to a decrease in population. A remedy for such possible decrease is given in the chapter on sterility. MODERN CONDITIONS AND REQUIREMENTS. According to the census of 1900, each child receives an average of 4.45 years of school education. This is about twice the amount INTRODUCTION. 23 received by the children of 1870. This is good. The increase in education through schools, publications and the increasing com- plexity of civilization is now so rapid that it needs little or no stimulus. What we need is more and better physical development and an increase in the average age at which reproduction takes place. One year added to the average age of reproduction is, as far as the succeeding generations are concerned, nearly equal to one year added to school education, and in some respects it is much more important. Each year added to the average age of repro- duction will, in a few generations, add two years to the average length of useful life, but the race cannot support these added years if the physical development is sacrificed to the mental. Healthy development is a gradual process, hot house development is un- healthy. We have gymnasiums, athletic clubs and physical culture publications. These are good, but we should add to them sys- tematic and scientific physical training for our children. We should add to the curricula of our schools a regular course of physical instruction under competent instructors. These should aim at, not the production of athletes, but the production of sound and healthy bodies. If this be done regularly and systematically, then the average age of reproduction may be advanced from generation to generation and man may yet live as many hundreds of years as he now lives scores of years. CONTROL OF HEREDITY. CHAPTER I. INHERITANCE, VARIATION AND SELECTION. If two acorns be planted they will sprout into plants which wilt in due time grow to be two oak trees. The manner of growth in both will be the same. Each will increase its diameter by adding external layers of wood; each will have its trunk knotted and gnarled in the manner peculiar to oak trees ; and from the trunk of each will grow branches having like characteristics. From the trunks and branches will grow crooked and twisted twigs which will bear those distinctively shaped leaves known as oak leaves and other acorns like those from which the tree originally came. PECULIAR DIFFERENCES IN TREES. While each of these trees is unmistakably an oak, the two will differ from each other in many particulars. One will lean to the right, the other to the left. Where one tree will have a single large branch growing from the trunk and smaller branches spaced irregularly about or above it, the other will have two or more medium-sized branches with smaller branches differently spaced and of different diameters. In fact, if the two trees be accurately compared with each other it will be found that they are not exactly alike in any particular, and this will be true whether the two origi- nal acorns came from the same tree or from different trees of the same species. Yet in spite of these differences there will not be 25 26 INHERITANCE, VARIATION AND SELECTION. the slightest doubt about the two trees being oak trees, and a botanist will instantly tell us to which species they belong of the two or three hundred into which oaks are divided. If we take other acorns from these two trees, and from 1 them raise other oak trees, they in their turn will have the same points of similarity and differ- ence which have just been noted. HEREDITY AND VARIATION. This difference in identity exists in every species of plants and animals, and illustrates both the laws of heredity and the phe- nomena of variation, though it explains neither. The laws of heredity declare that the offspring are and will be the same as the parent, while the facts of variation teach us that accompanying this likeness there is an unlikeness. From common observation we are led to expect that- the children of negro parents will be born with dark skins and curly hair; that the Chinese child will have slant eyes and the peculiar traits of Mongolian people; and that the child of white parents will have those peculiarities that characterize the white race. Going further we can distinguish different branches of the white race, and can tell the children of German, Irish or Italian parents from each other. Even within these branches we can often recognize brothers and sisters and know them to be children of particular parents. That a son looks like his father or mother has become so familiar to us that we are surprised when he does not, yet few persons who have not given the matter special attention are fully aware of the power of the laws of heredity and the persistency with which par- ticular characters are transmitted from generation to generation. Many examples have been given by writers on the subject of heredity, but it is intended to give here only enough to illustrate INHERITANCE, VARIATION AND SELECTION. 27 certain well known laws which will be more or less involved in the subsequent discussion. EXAMPLES OF INHERITANCE. Dr. Anderson gives the case of a bitch that was born with three legs. "She has had several litters of puppies, and among these several individuals were produced that had the same defect as herself." 1 Mr. Day 2 gives the case of a mare, "Basto", that had ten foals between 1721 and 1739, one of which was "Crab", by Alcock's "Gray Arabian." A granddaughter of Crab (great-granddaughter of Gray Arabian) had fourteen foals, six being gray and eight being bays or browns. One of these six grays had a gray foal which in turn had ten gray foals by six different stallions. One of the ten had a gray foal born more than a century after the first birth. As this relates to English thoroughbred horses, which are rarely of a gray color, the persistency of a single infusion of blood from a gray stallion is quite remarkable. In 1770 tiiere was born in Paraguay a hornless bull which became the progenitor of a race of hornless cattle that has multi- plied extensively in that country. 3 ABNORMAL FINGERS AND TOES. Huxley 4 gives the case of Gratio Kelleia, the Maltese, who was born with six fingers on each hand and a like number of toes on each foot. He had four children, Salvator, who had six fingers and toes like his father ; George, who had five each, but with one (1) Recreations in Agriculture, Vol. I, p. 68. (2) The Horse, p. 146. (3) Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology, Vol. IV, p. 1311. (4) The Origin of Species, p. 92. 28 INHERITANCE, VARIATION AND SELECTION. toe deformed; Andre, whose ringers and toes were quite perfect, like those of his mother; and Marie, who had five each, but with her thumbs deformed. Salvator, who married a five-fingered and five-toed woman, had four children, three of whom had six fingers and six toes. George had four children, two of whom had six fingers and six toes, and one of whom had six fingers on one hand. Andre's children were all normal, but Marie, who had no defect except deformed thumbs and who married a normal man, had one child with six toes. In the Colburn family, a woman having six fingers transmitted the deformity to her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchil- dren. Among her great-great-grandchildren, four out of eight also had six fingers on each hand. Dr. Lepine reports the case of a man who had only three fin- gers on each hand, and four toes on each foot. His grandfather and his son had the same deformity. 5 Adrian de Jussieu gives the case of a woman with three nipples. "The additional nipple was placed in the groin, and served ordi- narily for suckling, while in the mother of this woman, who was also born with three nipples, they were all placed on the anterior region of the thorax." 6 Darwin gives, 7 on the authority of Candole, a curious instance of inheritance of the power of moving the scalp. A man could, as a youth, pitch several heavy books from his head by the scalp alone ; and won wagers by performing this feat. His father, uncle, grand- father, and all his three children possessed the same power in the same unusual degree. Eight generations previously the family (5) Stock Breeding, p. 51. (6) British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, April, 1863, P- 460. (7) Descent of Man, Vol. I, 19. INHERITANCE,, VARIATION AND SELECTION. 2Q became divided into two branches, so that the head of the contem- porary generation was removed from this man in the seventh de- gree. This distant cousin lived in a different part of France, and being asked if he possessed the same power, immediately gave an exhibition of it. BLUSHING. Darwin also gives 8 the case of a family consisting of a father, mother, and three children, all of whom, without exception, were prone to blush to a most painful degree. Some of them were sent to travel in order to wear away this diseased sensibility, but noth- ing was of the slightest avail. Sir James Paget, 9 while examining the spine of a girl, was struck by her singular manner of blushing; a big splash appeared first on one cheek, and then other splashes, variously scattered over the face and neck. He subsequently asked the mother if her daughr ter always blushed in this peculiar manner and was answered, "Yes, she takes after me/' Sir J. Paget then perceived that by asking this question he had caused the mother to blush; and she exhibited the same peculiarity as her daughter. Girou mentions a family in which the father, the children and most of the grandchildren were left-handed. 10 It will be observed that while the first seven of these examples relate to organs, their number, color and form, the last three relate not so much to the organs themselves as to the inheritance of unus- ual functions of those organs. We thus see that peculiarities of function of organs may be inherited as well as the organs them- selves, and that differences in kind of function, or amount of func- (8) Expressions of the Emotions, p. 312. (9) Ibid. (10) Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. II, p. 15. 30 INHERITANCE, VARIATION AND SELECTION. tional capacity, does not necessarily involve noticeable differences in the organs to which these functions belong. For example, in the case of the Frenchman who possessed the power of moving his scalp, we are not informed that there was any unusual develop- ment of this part of the anatomy, while, as a matter of fact, if there had been a development of the scalp muscle?, at all propor- tional to the power of moving them, such an amazing development would certainly have been commented upon. TELEGONY. While the persistency of the gray color in the descendants of the thoroughbred mare Basto illustrates how a single infusion of blood will continue for a long time, it does not illustrate to the fullest extent how small an infusion may cause an appreciable effect. For some reason, not yet fully understood, a mother is more or less affected by the father of her offspring, and often to an extent that will mark her for life and all the future offspring she may have. A case often quoted, and sometimes distorted, is that of a chestnut mare that belonged to the Earl of Morton. In 1815 this mare was covered by a quagga, and the hybrid produced resem- bled the sire in color and in many peculiarities of form. In 1817, 1818 and 1821 the same mare was covered by a very fine black Arabian horse, -and produced successively three foals. Although she had not seen the quagga since 1816 each of the three foals bore his curious and unequivocal markings. 13 "A colt, the property of the Earl of Suffield, got by Laurel, so resembled another horse (Camel) that it was whispered, nay, even asserted, at Newmarket, that he must have been got by Camel. It was ascertained, however, that the only relation (n) First published in the "Philosophical Transactions," 1821, p. 20. INHERITANCE, VARIATION AND SELECTION. 3! which the colt bore to Camel was that the latter had served his mother the previous season." 12 Miles gives 13 three cases of mares once served by jacks and producing mules. When these mares were subsequently served by pure-bred stallions they produced foals resembling mules. THOROUGHBRED HORSES. Speaking of horses in general, "Cecil," a famous breeder of thoroughbreds, says: "It is curious to remark that when a thor- oughbred mare has once had foals by a common horse, no subse- quent foals which she may have had by thoroughbred horses have ever evinced any pretensions to racing qualities. There may be an exception, but I believe I am correct in saying that there is not. It is laid down as a principle That when a pure-bred animal of any breed has once been pregnant by one of a different breed, she is herself a cross ever after, the purity of her blood having been lost in consequence of this connection/ ' Mr. Day says 14 that since Cecil's time there has been only one known case of a thoroughbred mare producing a winner after being covered by a half-bred horse. If this be true for a horse that is one-half thoroughbred, what must be the case when the stallion is only a common horse with no thoroughbred blood? Darwin gives, 15 on the authority of Dr. Bower, the case of a black hairless Barbary bitch which was first impregnated by a mon- grel spaniel with long brown hair. She produced five puppies, three of which were hairless and two of which were covered with short brown hair. The next time she was put to a full-bred black, hair- Farmers' Magazine, Vol. XXXV, p. 130. (13) Stock Breeding, p. 257. (14) The Horse. (15) Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. II, p. 3- 32 INHERITANCE, VARIATION AND SELECTION. less Barbary dog, but the mischief had been implanted in the mother and again about half the litter looked like pure Barbarys and the other half like the short-haired progeny of the first father. McGillivray gives 16 the case of a polled Angus heifer which bore her first calf to a short-horn bull, and was then served by a black polled Angus bull. The calf from the last connection ap- proached the short-horn bull in color and form, and grew horns. Dr. Wells, of Grenada, put a flock of white ewes to a choco- late-colored, hairy ram, and the following year to a white ram of their own breed. The lambs got by the last connection had fleece more or less of a chocolate hue, and largely mixed with hair. 17 Miles also gives 18 a number of cases of cows, sheep, pigs, dogs, and hens which were similarly affected by previous impregnations. In a case known to myself, a dark-haired woman had, by a red-haired man, an illegitimate son who had red hair like his father. She afterwards married a dark-haired man and had by him a second son who had red hair like the first. There have also been reported a number of cases, more or less reliable (or unre- liable) of white women who bore mulatto children and subsequently bore white children having negro characteristics. REVIEW OF TELEGONY. With the exception of Cecil's remarks, all these cases appear to refer to the effect of the first impregnation, though I know of no reason why they should not apply to later ones. It is probably true, however, that the first impregnation would be more likely to influence the female than later ones, partly because she is younger (16) Sanders, "Horse Breeding," p. 52. (17) Ibid. (18) Stock Breeding, pp. 258 to 263. INHERITANCE, VARIATION AND SELECTION. 33 and more easily impressed, and partly because the later impregna- tions would have to share their influence with the previous ones. While the majority of these cases refer to external and apparent characters, those relating to thoroughbred horses refer to functions, and it is quite evident that the functions of organs are fully as liable to be influenced in this manner as are the organs themselves. It is also quite likely that widows have their offspring by a second marriage influenced in the same way. Although the statements relating to the effects of previous impregnations are vouched for by many observers, recent inves- tigations have thrown doubt on the whole series of phenomena. The trouble is no one seems to have systematically investigated the subject, and many of the so-called facts, especially those relating to human beings, are open to suspicion. In my examination of the pedigrees of eminent men I have observed what appeared to be an unusual number of widows who married a second time, and the children of those second marriages appeared as progenitors. This is suggestive but not demonstrative, and I have not carried out an investigation along this line because it does not appear that the results would be proof of anything. ATAVISM. Characters which are ordinarily transmitted from generation to generation sometimes disappear in the child and reappear in the grandchild, the great-grandchild, or even some more remote descendant. This action is called atavism and may be considered as an exception rather that the general rule. There are, however, a good many cases that illustrate this particular action. Darwin mentions 19 the case of a pointer bitch which had seven (19) Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. II, p. 46. 34 INHERITANCE, VARIATION AND SELECTION. puppies. Four of these were marked with blue and white, which is so unusual a color with pointers that she was thought to have played false with one of the greyhounds and the whole litter was condemned, but the game-keeper was permitted to save one as a curiosity. Two years afterwards a friend of the owner saw the young dog and declared that he was the image of his old pointer bitch Sappho, the only blue and white pointer of pure descent which he had ever seen. This led to a close inquiry and it was proved that he was a great-great-grandson of Sappho; so, that, according to the common expression, he had only one sixteenth of her blood in his veins. Mr. Day mentions 20 the case of a fox-terrier which had a pecu- liarly graceful action, and was supposed to be of a "perfectly pure" breed. Careful inquiries showed that a remote ancestor had been crossed with an Italian greyhound, and this ancestor had trans- mitted his graceful movements to this fox-terrier. Another peculiar case is given by Mr. Darwin. 21 A cross had been made between a setter and a spaniel, and this half-breed was crossed with a pure setter. After several successive crosses with pure setters a male was produced without any apparent traces of spaniel. This apparently pure setter was coupled with a pure setter female and produced spaniels. Mr. Darwin also gives 22 the case of a breeder who once crossed his fowls with a Malay race and subsequently wished to get rid of the foreign blood. After forty years of effort he was unsuccess- ful, as some fowls showing the effect of the Malay cross were continually appearing. (20) The Horse. (21) Animals and Plants. (22) Ibid. INHERITANCE, VARIATION AND SELECTION. 35 In a litter of pigs two young ones appeared with the marks of the Berkshire that had been used as a cross twenty-eight years before. 23 A man who had a double tooth in place of one incisor inherited that peculiarity from his paternal grandfather. Another man, healthy in every particular, but the son of a lame man, had children by three wives, and all of these children were lame like their grand- father. 24 PARTIAL TRANSMISSION. A very common occurrence is partial transmission, or trans- mission to part of the offspring and not to all of them. Several of the cases previously mentioned come under this head. Helm mentions one 25 which illustrates it very well. One member of a family had the second and third toes united, and this anomaly was transmitted for three generations to one person only in each generation out of an average of eight descendants in each family. Napoleon died of a cancer, a disease which he had inherited from his father, but the other members of the family were not afflicted with it. A case somewhat different but more marked is given by Qua- trefages. 26 In 1803 or I ^ O 5> M. Decemet discovered in his garden at Saint Denis, in the midst of a bed of acacias (Rubina psudo- acacia) an individual without thorns which he describes under the epithet spectabilis. It is to the multiplication of this individual by the arts of the gardener that all the thornless acacias now distributed in every part of the globe owe their origin. Now these individuals (23) Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. II, p. 68. (24) Miles, Stock Breeding, p. 71. (25) American Roadsters, p. 13. (26) The Human Species, p. 38. 36 INHERITANCE, VARIATION AND SELECTION. produce seed, but if the seeds are sown they yield only thorny acacias. This last case differs from the others in that the thornless char- acter of the acacias appears not to be transmissible. The cases of the fox-terrier which had a graceful action and the grandchildren who were lame like the grandfather are different from the other cases as they relate to functional peculiarities arising from the in- heritance of special structure. INHERITANCE BY SEX. In the examples of inheritance so far given, characters were transmitted indifferently to any of the offspring. Another kind of inheritance is known as inheritance by sex. In this class come all of those characters which are not connected with the act of reproduction, but which are transmitted to only one sex and are known as secondary sexual characters, and a mass of cases in which the transmission is to both, sexes but more commonly from father to son and from mother to daughter than vice versa. Secondary sexual characters are those which pertain to a particular sex, as a beard on a man and side feathers on the tail of a cock. Although such characters are not transmitted from one sex to the other, they are transmitted through the opposite sex to later generations of the same sex. Thus the beard that characterizes a man will be trans- mitted to the son of that man's daughter, though the daughter herself show not a trace of the beard. The inheritance of second- ary sexual characters is so well known that it is not necessary to dilate upon them. What is necessary to show is that many char- acters, not in any sense sexual characters, tend to be inherited more by the sex in which they originated than by the opposite sex. INHERITANCE, VARIATION AND SELECTION. 37 SEX IN TROTTING HORSES. Among American trotters the mares are known to be greater performers than the stallions. Helm 27 ranks Hambletonian as the first of the great stallions. Hambletonian was not a trotting stallion and his sire, Abdallah, was neglected and discredited during his lifetime, and it is said he died of starvation. In looking into the ancestry of Hambletonian I find that he was descended from a line of trotting mares, and his record is one of a sire of trotting mares. Goldsmith Maid was his granddaughter, and she had at least two additional trotting mares in her ancestry. I am not able to find, however, that her ancestry included any stallions of fame ex- cept Hambletonian and Abdallah. Sedgwick gives the case of a sporting dog, the issue of a set- ter mother and a spaniel father, with a setter bitch, and the male offspring were spaniels like the paternal grandfather, while the female offspring were setters, having the color of their mother. 28 There are breeds of sheep and goats in which the horns of the males differ greatly from those of the female. These differences, acquired under domestication, are regularly transmitted to the same sex. With cats the tortoise-shell color is usually transmitted to the female only, the males being rusty red. 29 Gout is more often transmitted from father to son than from father to daughter. 30 Sanders 31 states that he knows a family residing in Iowa in which the mother and three daughters were destitute of hair, while all of the sons had as much as the average of men. (27) American Roadsters, p. 151. (28) Quoted by Miles in "Stock Breeding," p. 233. (29) Descent of Man, Vol. I, p. 273. (30) Ibid., Vol. I, p. 283. (31) Horse Breeding, p. 24. 38 INHERITANCE; VARIATION AND SELECTION. In the cases of insanity Philips gives, from 117 insane males, 64 inherited from the father and 53 from the mother. For 147 insane females, 80 inherited from the mother and 67 from the father. In cases of consumption recorded by Lugol, of 106 con- sumptive males, 63 inherited the disease from the father and 43 from the mother. Of 108 consumptive females, 61 inherited the disease from the mother and 47 from the father. 32 Speaking of skin diseases Mr. Sedgwi'ck says: 33 "In some of these cases it is recorded that, while the males alone have suf- fered from the disease, the females alone have been able to transmit it, as in the case of Mr. Appleton, whose daughter conveyed the complaint to his grandsons, and who, in turn, transmitted it through their daughters to their grandsons ; the males in this fam- ily, as in many others similarly affected, never inheriting the disease from the fathers, but always through females from their grand- fathers." INHERITANCE AT CORRESPONDING AGES. Not all characters which are transmitted from parent to child are present in the child at birth, but appear at some later stage. In such cases the tendency is for the character to appear in the offspring at the same age that it first appeared in the parent. This rule includes nearly, if not all, secondary sexual characters, which usually appear near the age of maturity, as in the case of beards on men and the change of voice which occurs at puberty. Certain breeds of pigeons do not acquire their characteristic colors until they have moulted two, three or four times; and these modifications of plumage are regularly transmitted. 34 In the diseases like gout, apo- (32) Quoted by Miles in "Stock Breeding." (33) British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, 1861, p. 246. (34) Descent of Man, Vol. I, p. 272. INHERITANCE, VARIATION AND SELECTION. 39 plexy and consumption, the tendency is for them to appear at cer- tain definite ages in both parent and offspring. In discussing this subject Darwin concludes, 35 that where characters first appear late in life in one sex they tend to be trans- mitted to that sex alone, while those which appear early in life, or before maturity, tend to be transmitted alike to both sexes. The general truth of this rule will be apparent by considering the rela- tionship of adult males and females to their young. When the males and females resemble each other they usually both resemble the young, but when the males and females differ markedly from each other they usually differ in those characters which appear late in life. It is also a general rule that when the adults differ from the young the adult male differs more than the adult female. INHERITANCE AT EARLIER AGES. When there is a variation from the general rule that characters tend to appear in parent and offspring at corresponding ages, it seems that they more often tend to appear at an earlier age rather than at a later one. Professor Hyatt has assumed that the earlier appearance of a character is a law of nature, and has laid down vhat is called the law of acceleration or tachygenesis. He says: "All modifications and variations in progressive series tend to ap- pear first in the adolescent or adult stages of growth, and then to be inherited in successive descendants at earlier and earlier stages, according to the law of acceleration, until they become embryonic or are crowded out of the organization and replaced in the devel- opment by characteristics of later origin." 36 While I have no doubt as to the general truth of this law, I am inclined to think that it (35) Ibid., Vol. I, p. 276. (36) Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, No. 673. 4O INHERITANCE, VARIATION AND SELECTION. applies less to the organs than it does to the functions of the organs, and that when it applies to the organs themselves, it does so only through their functions. The reasons for this and the causes lead- ing to earlier or later appearance of inherited characters will be explained in a later chapter. SELECTION. When a litter of pigs is born, according to the laws of heredity they are like their mother, and according to the laws of variation we find that they differ one from another. When they have grown to mature size we find that some are larger and some are smaller than the mother. If we should select the largest female and from her and the largest obtainable male we raise another litter, it will again be found that some grow to a size larger and some to a size smaller than the new mother. Again selecting the largest male and female for another litter, we again find variations in size above and below the size of the parents, and we will have some specimen larger than any immediate ancestor. Although these variations in size from generation to generation are slight, it will be evident that by accumulating these slight variations it will only be a question of time until a race of pigs would be produced as large as elephants. If, on the other hand, instead of selecting the largest from which to breed the next generation, we should continually select the small- est, it would be only a question of time when we should have pigs as small as mice. Although this is a hypothetical proposition it is not an absurd- ity. That such variations occur we know, and no man has yet found any point, or indication of a point, where they cease. In reality our hypothetical case represents only a small fraction of what the scientific world now accepts as a fact. That fact is that INHERITANCE, VARIATION AND SELECTION. 41 all animal life, from the largest whale down to the microscopic unicellular organism, is descended from some primordial form, and consequently that all animals (and all plants, for that matter) are more or less closely related. KINDS OF SELECTION. This process of selecting particular animals or particular plants from which to produce another generation of animals or plants is what is known as "selection." When selection is practiced by man it is called artificial selection, and when that selection has a definite object in view and is carried out with the intention of securing definite results, it becomes methodical selection. It is through the methodical selection and preservation of desirable variations that we have obtained our improved breeds of animals and varieties of plants. So perfect have become the methods of selection that it is said that a breeder can, in a few generations, produce any particular form of animal desired. During the early history of man, and at the present time among savage and barbarous people, there is a process of selection that is not methodical but depends upon whim, pleasure, or convenience, and consequently is called unconscious selection. Because the man, having to kill an animal, kills the less pleasing or useful and retains the one that pleases his fancy, unconscious selection improves the breed subjected to it though the improvement is not so rapid as with methodical selection. In a state of nature, very many more young are produced than can possibly survive to reproduce. If there were not a constant elimination of individuals, even the slowest breeding animals would soon overrun the surface of the earth. This elimination occurs through struggles for food during periods of scarcity, contests 42 INHERITANCE, VARIATION AND SELECTION. between males for the possession of females, and inability to escape from enemies. During a period of drought when there is a scarcity of herbage, the giraffe with the longest neck will be able to obtain the best supply of food and will survive when the shorter necked individual will succumb from starvation. When deers are pursued by wolves, it is the fleet ones that will escape and the slow ones that will fall victims. Among polygamous animals, as wild horses, wild cattle, the deer family and elephants, the larger and stronger males expel or kill the smaller and weaker ones. This process of elimination of the weaker or less perfect, and preservation of the stronger and best adapted has been called natural selection, or the survival of the fittest. In addition to the forms of selection described, there is another form called sexual selection, a term used to express the process by which a female selects and accepts the attentions of the male which is most pleasing to her. It is through sexual selection that many male birds have obtained their gorgeous plumage and other birds have acquired the power of song. It will be evident that before there can be selection, or survival of the fittest, there must be variations from which the selection is made, and that to make such selection effective there must be the force of heredity to preserve the variations selected. Having these two forces, selection becomes an explanation of the process of evolution. It is to Mr. Darwin that we owe our knowledge of the existence of natural selection and its action upon all forms of animals and plants. He considered it as probably the most potent factor in organic evolution, but since his day many naturalists have come to consider it the only factor. INHERITANCE, VARIATION AND SELECTION. 43 IN-AND-IN BREEDING. Closely related to methodical selection, as practiced by man on domestic animals, is the process of in-and-in breeding. In-and- in breeding is the mating of closely related animals, often parent and offspring, or brother and sister, for the purpose of fixing a particular character upon a breed. Thus, when a new character appears, the chances of having that character reappear in the off- spring are very much increased if the character is common to both parents. As new characters appear rarely, and as the probabilities of the identical character simultaneously appearing in two unre- lated animals of opposite sexes are extremely remote, the breeder carefully watches the progeny of the newly varied individual until he finds one of the opposite sex having the same peculiarity, and then mates parent and child. Some, if not all, of the progeny of a couple so mated are quite certain to also have the new character- istics. By the careful selection and mating of these last offspring the new characters are fixed firmly within a few generations. By this process we have a new breed of animals, and as long as there is no cross with animals outside the breed we have what is known as "pure blood." As a consequence, all of our fancy breeds of animals are the product of in-and-in breeding. Darwin considered in-and-in breeding to be injurious when carried to a considerable extent, and this is true when the evil effects are not eliminated by judicious selection of the best individuals and the rejection of the poorer ones. That selection is a full cure for any ill effects of in-and-in breeding is abundantly proved by the superiority of pure breeds over mongrel stock. EFFECTS OF MATING RELATED ANIMALS. The evil effects of in-and-in breeding arise from the fact that in many animals there are certain dormant defects. When unrelated 44 INHERITANCE, VARIATION AND SELECTION. animals are mated there is little probability that the same dormant defects will exist in both, but when both parents are from the same stock the probabilities of the same defect existing in both are in- creased, and the mating of these two may cause the dormant defect to become a manifest one. Of all animals, man is the most vicious in respect to his personal life. By immoderate indulgences in intoxicants and narcotics, and by dissipation and excesses of all kinds, man acquires a great variety of defects, both dormant and manifest, and these defects are transmitted to his offspring. It therefore happens that with man even a remote kind of in-and-in breeding often results in insanity or degeneracy of some kind, and much has been written about the evil effects of marriage between cousins. Such evil effects, however, do not arise from the rela- tionship itself, but from similar dormant defects inherited from the same vicious ancestor some few generations back. In-and-in breeding is therefore the mating of animals having identical characteristics, the result of which is to make manifest what was before dormant, or to accentuate and fix what was before mildly manifest and transient. The expression is usually applied to the mating of closely related animals, but in future pages I shall refer to marriage between persons inheriting similar characteristics from different ancestors as a species of in-and-in breeding. PREPOTENCY. If the offspring of parents differing considerably from each other be carefully examined, it will usually be found that they resemble one parent more than the other. The power that one parent has more than the other to impress the offspring is called prepotency, and may exist in either the male or female. Usually the male is more apt to be prepotent than the female, as in recip- INHERITANCE, VARIATION AND SELECTION. 45 rocal crosses between the horse and the ass, in which the mule more strongly resembles the ass, and the hinny resembles the horse. In some cases of crosses between different breeds, one breed is pre- potent over the other irrespective of whether it is represented by the male or female. In cases of crosses between different breeds of animals, pre- potency appears to lie with that breed which has had its charac- teristics most firmly fixed by in-and-in breeding. Thus pure blood animals are prepotent over mongrel stocks. This fact is sometimes taken advantage of by breeders, as was the case of the production of the Charmoise breed of sheep in France. It appears that half- bred English sheep will thrive in France, but that full, or more than half, English blood are failures; also that half-bred sheep do not exhibit the improvement desired. Under these circumstances M. Nalingie-Nouel proceeded as follows: He produced a mixture of four native French breeds, which was without decided character, and to such mixed-blood ewes he put a pure New Kent ram. From this "one obtains a lamb containing fifty-hundredths of the purest and most ancient of English blood, with twelve and a half hun- dredths of four different French races, which are individually lost in the preponderance of English blood, and disappear almost entirely, leaving the improving type in the ascendant." 37 As between two individuals of the same breed, the same rule probably holds, that the individual which has had its characteristics the more firmly fixed by in-breeding will be prepotent. In the life of an individual, a character is more firmly fixed in comparative old age than in youth, consequently we may assume, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that, other things being equal, ffo older individual will be prepotent over the younger one. (37) Miles, Stock Breeding, p. 200. 46 INHERITANCE, VARIATION AND SELECTION. As fixity of character is in contradistinction to variability, in a cross between two races, that race will be prepotent which has been the less variable during the immediately preceding generations. The white race is more variable than the negro, and in crosses between them we find negro characteristics predominate. It is well known that animals and plants under domestication are more vari- able than they are in the wild state, and it is also known that this variability is induced by the stimulated conditions existing through successive generations. As civilization, as we know it, is a series of intensely stimulated conditions, we see why the civilized races are more variable and less prepotent than uncivilized races. This generalization must, however, be used with caution because the very intensity of civilization acts to give a fixity to some character- istics which are less firmly fixed by a less degree of intensity. GROWTH AND REPAIR. Growth is essentially a slow process, depending upon the amount of material digested and assimilated over and above what is neces- sary to maintain the individual in a uniform condition. As this surplus is always a limited quantity, any acceleration of growth in one part is accompanied by a lack of growth or degeneracy in some other part. Strength and endurance, in the sense of vitality, are as much matters of growth as is mere increase in bulk, and the development of these qualities absorbs assimilated nutriment just as completely. Those animals and plants which are strong, enduring and tenacious of life are those which grow slowly in bulk, while those which increase rapidly in size are weak and are easily killed. Functional power is also a matter of slow development, and while it is associated with the size of the functioning organ it is not pro- portional to such size. It also absorbs nourishment in its develop- INHERITANCE, VARIATION AND SELECTION. 47 ment, and the very rapid development of functional power in some one organ can only be at the expense of the proper development of some other organ or quality. Growth is distinguished from repair in that it involves increase in size without the incorporation of force or power in the growing organ. On the other hand, repair is a process of rebuilding a wasted organ so as to incorporate in it a functional power that it did not have before. Growth and repair sometimes accompany each other and sometimes do not. Thus, the muscles of a child both grow and are repaired; the same muscles in an adult, when used uniformly for a long time, are repaired but do not grow ; the hair grows, but is not repaired. In organs which both grow and are repaired the ratio of growth and repair to each other is continually changing. In the embryonic stage there is growth with but little or no repair ; in youth the two are nearly equal ; and in the adult we have repair with but little or no growth. CHAPTER II. THEORIES OF HEREDITY AND VARIATION. The persistency with which heredity acts in preserving the peculiarities of races and individuals through many generations, and the ever present variations of these peculiarities have given rise to many diverse theories to account for their relationship to each other. "Like produces like" is a very old saying, and when we consider that the offspring comes directly from the parent, it is difficult to conceive that it would be anything other than that from which it came. We can imagine how the same thing may at cer- tain times take different forms, but not how one thing may become another thing unless it be through the total destruction of the first thing. Thus we may have water now as ice, again as steam, and at another time as snow, but under each and every form it is water. It can be transformed into some other substance only by decom- position and the recombination of its constituent elements with some other elements. Likewise a being descended from a human being can be no other than human. He can be transmuted into a plant only by disintegration and reabsorption. Inheritance being simply an expression for the fact that the deriven is like that from which it is derived, is self-evident and needs no explanation. Variation, on the contrary, being something different from what is apparently self-evident, demands an explanation of when, where and how it arises. VARIATION DEFINED. The word "variation," as used in biology, represents two dis- tinct conditions or operations : First, the appearance of an entirely 48 NAPOLEON [23] BENJAMIN FRANKLIN [51] THEORIES OF HEREDITY AND VARIATION. 49 new organ or character ; and second, a change, more or less marked, in some organ or character already in existence. It is in this second sense in which the word will be principally used, and it will be variation of existing characters of which the following pages will treat. "The characters which are inherited, and which are present at birth, are termed congenital, while those that appear in the body under the influence of extreme stimuli are termed acquired." 1 If the character which appears at birth differs from the character of the parent, then we have a congenital variation. An acquired variation we can understand because we can see it occurring as the direct results of causes with, which we are familiar, but congenital variations occur out of sight, and we can arrive at the cause of them only by a process of reasoning or experiment. One of the causes assigned for congenital variations is the result of environment or circumstances under which the ancestors have lived. Dogs taken from England to India degenerate in a few generations; sheep taken from one place to another change in their form and in the quality of their wool; and plants moved from their natural habitat acquire new characteristics which are inherited. Another cause assigned for variations that become hereditary is the result of use and disuse. Darwin found that tame ducks have their legs larger and wings smaller than wild ducks. This is assumed to be an inherited effect arising from the fact that tame ducks walk more and fly less. Some naturalists think that the large hind legs of a kangaroo are due to his habit of jumping, while others maintain that his habit of jumping is due tr ^e fact that he has large and powerful legs. (i) Cope, Primary Factors of Origin of Evolution, p. 399- 50 THEORIES OF HEREDITY AND VARIATION. Still another cause of variation is said to be the fact that the individual is the product of two unlike parents, and consequently cannot be entirely like one without causing inheritance to fail in respect to the other. It cannot be denied that this is a cause, but if it be the only cause, then the question would arise: How did the parents become different ? Those who advocate this theory to the exclusion of the theory involving enviroment and use, add to it the statement that the germ plasm out of which the new indi- vidual grows is subject to a series of divisions and conjunctions, and that as these divisions and conjunctions are not always equal, the products are variable. ARISTOTLE ON HEREDITY. The earliest writer on the subject of heredity appears to have been Aristotle, who lived 384 to 322 B. C. In his "Generation of Animals" (I., Sec. 35), he says: "Children resemble their parents not only in congenital characters, but in those acquired later in life. For cases are known where parents have been marked by scars, and children have shown traces of these scars at the same points. A case is also reported from Chalcedon in which a father had been branded with a letter, and the same letter, somewhat blurred and not sharply defined, appeared upon the arm of his child." At another place (History of Animals), Aristotle refers again to this matter and states that the inheritance of mutilations is rare. From this it is apparent that Aristotle considered that characters acquired in one generation become congenital in the next, and that he carries it far enough to include the occasional transmission of mutilations. Although we frequently hear of inherited mutilations, the reports concerning them are hard to corroborate. Dr. Talbot 2 has, how- (2) Degeneracy. THEORIES OF HEREDITY AND VARIATION. 5! ever, by gathering a large amount of statistics, proved that, among Jews, children are not infrequently born wholly or partly circum- cised. This appears to be due to the continued repetition of the same mutilation generation after generation. LAMARCK'S LAWS. Although Aristotle was the first to advance the theory that acquired characters become congenital characters in succeeding generations, the theory of such transference as an explanation of variations was not fully stated and explained until done so by Lamarck, a French philosopher, in his "Philosophic Zoologique," published in 1809. The statement of his theory may be best given by quoting his third and fourth laws: THIRD LAW. The development of organs and their force, or power of action, are in direct relationship to the employment of these organs. FOURTH LAW. All that has been acquired or altered in the organization of individuals during their lives is preserved by generation, and trans- mitted to individuals which spring from those which have under- gone these changes. At another place Lamarck explains his third law as follows : "In every animal which has not passed the term of its develop- ment, the more frequent and sustained employment of each organ strengthens little by little this organ, develops it, and gives it a power proportional to the length of its employment; whereas the constant lack of use of the same organ insensibly weakens it, dete- riorates it, progressively diminishes its powers, and ends by causing it to disappear." 52 THEORIES OF HEREDITY AND VARIATION. The third law and its explanation is now known as the "Law of Use and Disuse," or kinetogenesis ; the fourth law, as "Inherit- ance of Acquired Characters;*' and the two of them together as "Lamarckian Factors." We have in Lamarck's laws a clear and distinct statement of the cause of variations, but Lamarck did not give any adequate proof of their truth. Neither has any one since Lamarck's time been able to give a proof that was entirely satisfactory, though many naturalists believe that these laws are a true statement of facts. WEISMANN'S THEORY. The opposing ideas are best represented by the theory of August Weismann, a German embryologist who has carried his investiga- tions back to the earliest known source of life. The most primitive forms of animal life consist of minute rounded bodies of gelatinous substance. These bodies are called "cells," and each is a complete individual in itself. An individual which consists of a single cell is called unicellular, and unicellular organisms are generally desig- nated by the term plasm or protoplasm. Individuals which consist of a number of cells grouped together are called multicellular, and multicellular organisms are a step higher in the scale of nature. In unicellular organisms the cell grows for a time, then there appears around it an equatorial depression like a string tied around the center of a pillow. This depression gets deeper and deeper until the two halves are finally separated and float away as two complete cells. These new cells again grow and each again divides in the same manner. In the lower forms of multicellular organisms an individual consists of a certain number of cells, say sixteen. These cells grow to a certain size, when each cell will divide into 1 two cells of smaller size, making an individual of thirty-two cells. The THEORIES OF HEREDITY AND VARIATION. 53 individual then divides itself into two groups of sixteen cells, each group becoming an individual. After this division a new period of growth begins, and the processes of division are repeated. In some forms, after a repeated number of divisions, the cells become weakened or degenerated and are not able to continue the process of growth and division. When this occurs, two cells, or two groups of cells, which have not separated from each other, coalesce or merge into each other and form one stronger individual. After they have remained in this condition for a time they are again able to begin the process of producing new individuals by a series of divisions and subdivisions. In this coalescence we have the beginning of sexual propagation. DIFFERENT KINDS OF CELLS. As we get higher in the scale of multicellular beings, the cells become differentiated, so that to some cells are given certain duties to perform, while to other cells are given certain other duties. In a sense these cells are like the different individuals in civilized societies where one man is a farmer, a second is a tailor, a third is a shoemaker, a fourth is a merchant, and so on. Those cells to which are given the office of reproduction are called germ cells, and the substance of germ cells is called germ plasm. The cells which constitute the body of the individual and form the bones and muscles by means of which the individual is able to move about and secure its food, are called the somatic cells, or simply the soma. When we come to man and the higher animals and higher plants, the germ cells are able to propagate themselves, or at least to become multiplied in number, but they are not able to develop beyond the stage of simple cells without- coming into contact and merging (coalescing) with cells of a slightly different character., Thsse two 1*4 THEORIES OF HEREDITY AND VARIATION. kinds of cells are known as male cells (spermatozoa) and female cells (ova), and may be borne by different individual as in most animals, or by the same individual as in the flowers of most plants. When there is a union or coalescence between an ovum and a spermatozoon the resulting cell has the power, under proper con- ditions, of developing into a complete individual of the parent species. Weismann's theory is that, in the formation of a new individual out of this compound cell, all of the germ plasm which constitutes it is not used up in the production or growth of the individual, but that part of it is carried over intact within the body of the new individual, and is the material which originates the growth of more germ plasm in the later life of this individual. In other words, he holds that the germ cells grow only from germ cells, and not at all from somatic cells. As we know that somatic cells are the differ- entiated descendants of germ cells, and have no conclusive evidence that germ cells are produced from somatic cells, there is much reason in Weismann's contention. In fact, the very definition of germ cells and somatic cells implies that the first are for reproduc- tion and the second are not. The relationship of germ cells to somatic cells is like the relationship of bees in a hive to each other, where the queen is for reproduction and the workers are incapable of reproduction, but act simply as gatherers of material to support the colony. THE ISOLATION OF GERM CELLS. While the germ cells are housed within and are nourished by the body (the soma), the followers of Weismann insist that that fact does not at all affect the germ cells as such, because they are completely removed from external conditions and their surroundings are so nearly identical, under all circumstances and through any THEORIES OF HEREDITY AND VARIATION. 55 number of generations, that external circumstances are without influence that will reach a succeeding generation. A man may be born weak and frail, yet may, by care with his food and bodily exercise, develop into a robust individual, but the Weismannians insist that that fact will not make his children stronger or healthier, because they claim it is the somatic cells and not the germ cells that are developed and strengthened. To admit such a result would be to admit use-inheritance, the denial of which is a fundamental part of their theory. NEO-DARWINIANS AND NEO-LAMARCKIANS. Those who support the Weismannian theory, and other theories of a similar character, call themselves Neo-Darwinians, not because Darwin was a believer in any such doctrine, but because they explain evolution entirely by variation and selection, the elements on which Darwin based his theory of the Origin of Species. In this, however, they go much beyond Darwin by making "variation" into "con- genital variation," while Darwin believed that variations were due in part to the accumulated effects of use and disuse. While the Neo- Lamarckians explain the loss of the power of flight in domestic ducks to the disuse of their wings, the Neo-Darwinians explain that tame ducks, not being required to fly to procure food and to escape ene- mies, the variations toward greater wing power are not preserved by selection, and consequently that wing power deteriorates. They also argue that ducks with greater wing power are more liable to escape, and that man deliberately kills off ducks liable to escape by flying, and preserves those less able to fly and less wild. They thus bring selection to explain what had before been explained by the inherited effects of use and disuse. It is maintained by the Neo-Darwinians that as long as any 56 THEORIES OF HEREDITY AND VARIATION. change can be explained by the known means of congenital varia- tion and selection, it is unreasonable to attribute that change to the inherited result of use or disuse, while at the same time they admit that if any change can be shown which is explained by use and dis- use and is inexplicable by congenital variation, then their theory falls to the ground. The introduction of the word "congenital" is the key to the whole controversy, because it is universally admitted that all change is due to variation. The only question is the cause of variation. Weismann does not fully explain how variations occur, but he assumes that the two uniting cells vary somewhat in size, in form, in chemical formation, or in manner of uniting, and they thereby cause a variation in the resultant being. This kind of variation is called congenital variation. That congenital variation exists in some form is shown by the variations in twins, and in the differ- ences among the different individuals in a litter of puppies, kittens or pigs. CONFLICT OF THEORIES. We thus have two theories which conflict with each other and neither of which has been fully and satisfactorily demonstrated. The issue between them is sharply defined, and consists of the ques- tion as to whether or not acquired characters are inherited and thus become congenital. If the answer to this question had only an academical interest, or if only related to the animals and plants with which man has to deal, then it would not be very important whether the question were answered or not, as these animals and plants may be dealt with in a satisfactory manner by selection. But as it also involves man, and as we cannot use selection by killing off the poor specimens of humanity and breeding only from the best, THEORIES OF HEREDITY AND VARIATION. 57 the question takes on an importance that it would not otherwise have. A little consideration will show the reason why this question is one of vital importance. Man is a free agent, more or less cir- cumscribed by heredity and environment. Consequently he may,, in a large measure, do what he pleases, or what his intelligence tells him is wise, convenient or safe. If he goes out walking, he may turn to the right or turn to the left as suits his fancy ; he may live a life of goodness, kindness and charity; or he may act the part of the deepest dyed villain as long as his wit will enable him to avoid being found out. While some men are so hedged in by hereditary traits that they are not able to act by choice anywhere within such a wide range, a very large part, if not the majority of men are so able. Even those who are handicapped by a vicious inheritance, if above the grade of idiocy, are capable of leading relatively better or worse lives, and this capability is very largely dependent upon intelligence and brain power. A man of great mental ability has little difficulty in choosing his mode of life, and he usually chooses to lead a respectable life. The man who is morally weak is the man who is mentally weak. QUESTION OF MORAL RESPONSIBILITY. If it be true that all the qualities, good and bad, with which a man is endowed when he is born have their origin in the chemical composition of the germ plasm, or in its divisions, or in its con- junctions, and consequently are absolutely independent of any action of the parents arising from free will, then the parent has no moral responsibility arising from parenthood except such as arises after the child is born. He may, within the range of his free will, be virtuous or vicious, be active or indolent, in fact may be or do any- 58 THEORIES OF HEREDITY AND VARIATION. thing whatever and his children will not be affected thereby in the remotest degree. They will be exactly what their grandparents transmitted, plus or minus such variations as fortuitously arise. If, on the other hand, there be such a thing as use-inheritance, and children are influenced for good or bad by the pre-natal actions of their parents within the range of free will, then the moral responsibility of parents reaches back to their own early lives, and after the birth of children reaches forward to their grandchildren. Not only would there be direct responsibility on the part of parents, but that responsibility would extend to the State to see that all reasonable efforts be made to improve and develop future genera- tions. In fact, if use-inheritance be an actuality, then there is within the hands of the present generation the power to improve future generations, and consequently the race, more fully and completely than would be possible through the most scientific process of selec- tion. All that is necessary is positive knowledge that characters acquired by the parents are transmitted to the offspring, and a knowledge of the conditions under which such transmission may take place. If this knowledge will give this power, then it is difficult to conceive of any knowledge that is more important to acquire. CHAPTER III. BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. It having been shown that the problem before us is to determine whether acquired characters are or are not transmitted to the off- spring, it becomes necessary to define the range within which such inquiry should be carried. It may be admitted in advance that not all acquired characters are the results of the functional activity of those organs with which they are associated, and consequently that if non-functional characters become inherited, such inheritance is not due to use. Thus, hair which was originally straight may become wavy, that which was light may become dark, or that which was dark may become white. It is difficult to conceive how such changes could be due to any activity of the hair, and they certainly are not due to free will actions on the part of the individual. It is true that hair which was rough and coarse may, by care and attention, become smooth and fine, and it is possible that such an acquired character may become hereditary, but that is quite different from a case in which the character is acquired through the use of the organ itself. ORGANS AND THEIR FUNCTIONS. To find the effects of use we should choose an organ which has a functional activity of its own, and one in which such activity is within the control of the individual. An organ and its function are not the same, and the functional activity and power of an organ does not necessarily correspond to the size and shape of the organ. A finger is made of muscle, bone, blood vessels, nerves and skin, 59 6O BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. besides certain minor parts. The function of the muscle is contract- ability from which we obtain force. The function of the bones is to furnish a support or base upon which the muscles may act. The blood vessels supply material to repair the waste due to functional activity of the muscles; the nerves convey sensation by which the action of the muscles may be controlled; and the skin serves as a casing to contain the other parts. The nose, an organ not differing very much in size or shape from the finger, has approximately the same proportions of muscle, bone, blood vessels, nerves and skin, but the functional activity of its muscles is vastly less. When we use the finger we use principally its muscles, when we use the nose we use principally its nerves olfactory nerves. The external human ear, though differing widely from the finger and nose in shape, does not differ much in the amount of material out of which it is formed. It is, however, inert. What function it has is simply that of deflecting sound waves, and this function is not within the control of the individual. EFFECT OF EXERCISE. If we exercise the fingers continually, as in piano playing, they acquire both strength and flexibility. Strength and flexibility are, therefore, acquired characters arising from use of the muscles of the fingers. If we examine the fingers before and after such acquire- ment, we find that the differences in size and shape are scarcely perceptible. These acquired characters of strength and flexibility give the fingers an increased functional capacity, i. e., an increased ability to perform their natural functions. When we find an indi- vidual with characters which might possibly be ascribed to the results of ancestral use, we find these characters are not necessarily organs of increased size, but organs having an increased functional BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. 6l capacity. Organs of a given size and shape are transmitted from generation to generation with great persistency and with very little variation, but the functional capacity of these organs varies greatly and often varies rapidly. We know that use will cause an organ to vary in power much more rapidly than it varies in size or shape, and when we observe that an organ is transmitted in its normal size and shape, but with tremendously increased power, it is hard to conceive how such a variation could occur except through an ancestor having acquired such power in the same organ and having transmitted that power to the offspring. We have justification for this view from the fact that we see structure arising without having any assignable cause, but we never find functional capacity arising during the life of an individual except through use. From this we see that the inheritance of acquired characters means use-inherit- ance, and use-inheritance means the inheritance of acquired func- tional capacity. It is from this standpoint of the inheritance of acquired func- tional capacity that we will investigate the subject of the transmis- sion of acquired characters, and the organ selected will be the brain, because the brain varies more widely in power than any other organ. It is only necessary to compare the brain of a Humboldt with the brain of an ordinary mental incompetent to see how great may be the difference in functional capacity when the difference in size is slight. THE LAW OF PROBABILITIES. If the Weismannian theory be true in that part which says that ancestral use is absolutely without effect upon descendants, and that variations arise fortuitously within the germ plasm, then advan- tageous and disadvantageous variations will occur according to the law of probabilities. Thus, if we take one thousand births as they 62 BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. occur chronologically, or take them in any other manner that does not partake of selection in the biological sense, and from this one thousand determine the kind and extent of variations, then the standard so established will be a very accurate index of the kind and extent of variations in any other one thousand births selected from any class of people in any part of the world. It would be as true for the lower class as for the higher class, because the extent of variation arising at a birth would be measured from the class in which the birth occurred, and there is no reason for thinking that variations would occur more frequently in one class than in an- other. In nine-tenths of the cases the variations would be very slight and not depart from the ancestral standard in a noticeable de- gree. In one-tenth the variations would be quite noticeable and would be divided equally between variations above and variations below the ancestral standard. In one case in one hundred the va- riation would be great, and in one in one thousand the variation would be extraordinary. Variations in one direction are usually followed by variations in the opposite direction, so that a class of people having a given standard of mental power will persist in maintaining that standard through many generations. DIFFERENT CLASSES. When, in any community, there exist two classes of individuals, if one class increase in numbers faster than the other class, either through earlier marriages, more prolific marriages, or both, then it is only a question of time when the rapidly increasing class will absorb the less rapidly increasing one. This may be illustrated by a few figures. Assuming a community composed of one thousand blacks, and one thousand whites, if the whites increase in numbers at the rate of ten per cent during each decade, and the blacks increase BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. at the rate of twenty per cent, then at the end of fifty-year periods the population will stand as follows: Years. o Whites. 10 per cent. i ooo Blacks. 20 per cent. Iooo 50. . 1 610 2/i88 I OO 2 ZQ1 ^2,400 6 TO? ISO. . ^>jyo 4177 ,1^ T C /( TO 200 j 1 // 6 727 1 0>4 1U oQ T fin 250. . u >/^/ TO 8^O JO,1UU OC 3OO ^oo. . I7.4SO yo>oy u 277.7CO This shows that at the end of three hundred years the rapidly increasing- blacks would be 13.6 times as numerous as the slowly increasing whites. But a time comes in each community when the population cannot further increase, or can only increase slowly. This stoppage of numerical increase takes place gradually, and is assumed to first affect those which are normally less prolific, so that before the time when increase ceases for the community, the less prolific have begun to decrease if they have not become wholly extinct. LOWER CLASSES MOST PROLIFIC. In the civilized communities of Europe and America there exist two classes of people, known respectively as the intelligent or upper class, and the ignorant or lower class. There is no dis- tinct line of demarkation between them, as they grade into each other through innumerable intermediate degrees. Yet we all recog- nize these two classes by the intellectual power of the individuals which compose them. While there is no natural line of division between them we may, for convenience, draw an arbitrary line and 64 BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. say that one-third of the population belongs to the upper class and two-thirds belongs to the lower class. Common observation and the statistics of marriages, births and deaths tell us that the ignor- ant, the vicious, and the mentally incompetent individuals of a com- munity marry early and rear large families, while the intelligent and desirable members of society marry late and have few offspring. The result of this is that the descendants of the ignorant class are becoming relatively more numerous and threaten to supplant the descendants of the intelligent class. PROPOSED RESTRICTIONS INADEQUATE. There is nothing new in this illustration of the relative rates of increase of the inferior and superior classes of society. The subject has been treated upon by many writers. Galton and Haycraft see in this rapid propagation of the less desirable class of people a serious menace to the future of the race, and in fact conclude that the race is degenerating at the present moment. They both argue, as do others, that there should be a restriction and control of child- bearing as the only means of checking this downward tendency. This may be considered as an ideal plan for race improvement, but it is not a practical one in the present state of civilization. If the race be now deteriorating the plan will be still less practical in the future, while if it be not deteriorating, then there is no occasion for the remedy. The statistics which show that the lower classes of society repro- duce more rapidly than the higher and more advanced classes are simply a modern demonstration of a process that has been going on for several centuries. The proof of this is abundant. We have only to compare the known multiplication of the race with the fact that a very large part of the eminent men of the last two centuries left BACON [52] The Philosopher BISMARCK [44] The Statesman SHAKESPEARE [36?] The Poet ALEXANDER THE GREAT [26] The Conqueror HUMBOLDT [49] CUVIER [52] DARWIN [43] HUXLEY [45?] BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. 65 no descendants at all, and of those who did very many had sons who fell far below their fathers in the functional capacity of their brains. DEDUCTION FROM WEISMANN^S THEORY. From the standpoint that all variations arise fortuitously in the germ plasm, we have the deduction that if this be so, then variations occur according to the law of probabilities, and a class which is inferior in mental capacity will remain inferior, while a class which is superior will remain superior. With this we have the fact that what we know as the inferior class is, and has for a long time been, reproducing itself more rapidly than the superior class. From these two elements there is but one deduction, and that is that the race has been deteriorating for several centuries, and that the mental capacity of the men living today is less than that of the men who lived one, two, or three centuries ago. THE RECORD OF HISTORY. But this deduction is directly and flatly contradicted by history. The record of the nineteenth century shows that the mental achieve- ments of its men were greater than those of all other centuries com- bined. The record of the eighteenth century shows that its men were greater than those of its predecessors and only second to those of the nineteenth century. "Professor Broca found that skulls from graves in Paris of the nineteenth century were larger than those from the vaults of the twelfth century, in the proportion of 1,484 to i,426.' 51 This is an increase in brain size of more than four per cent and indicates a very much larger increase in mental power. From a premise containing two elements, we have a deduction which is proved to be false, hence at least one of these elements (i) Descent of Man, p. 140. 66 BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. must itself be false, and the indications are that the falsity lies with the assumption that variations occur only fortuitously in the germ plasm. GREECE AND ROME. It has been shown that the theory of use-inheritance means the inheritance of acquired functional capacity. If this theory be true, then a continuous education from generation to generation should cause the men of each succeeding generation to have greater mental power than those of the preceding generation, and a cessation of education should cause descendants to decline in mental power. History gives us several instances of such series of educated genera- tions. We find in Greece the first case in which the record is suffi- ciently accurate to enable us to compare it with the theory of use- inheritance. The inhabitants of ancient Greece were divided into two classes, slaves and their masters. All common labor being per- formed by the slaves, the ruling class was left free for its members to use their time in education, polities and war, all three of which had a tendency to develop their mental powers. At what time edu- cation became general among the ruling class is uncertain. Homer lived about 900 B. C, and the fact that his poems have come down to us indicates some kind of record at that early date. The first date at which the chronology of Greece becomes definite is 776 B. C. At about 650 B. C. there was already in existence a reading class of people, though the class at that time was not extensive. From, this time on the ruling class seems to have been regularly educated at schools kept by the men most famous for their learning. In any list of famous Greeks we find the greatest number of them, and the men of greatest ability, located in the century between 425 and 325 B. C, and we find that this culmination was gradually reached in BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. 67 a manner that corresponds exactly with our deduction from the theory of use-inheritance. In the case of Rome we find the same education accompanied by the gradual increase in number and ability of her great men. In Rome the educational rise commenced somewhat later than in Greece and culminated soon after the beginning of the Christian era. THE DARK AGES. For about a thousand years after the fall of the Roman Empire there was in Europe no education of the masses, and no education of any kind except a little attained by the clergy. As priests were forbidden to marry and consequently left no offspring, or at least were not supposed to leave any, there was no possibility of use- inheritance through ancestral education. The almost total absence of any intellectual achievements during this thousand years shows that there was nothing produced which could be referred to as use- inheritance. In other words, the absence of use and the absence of anything that could be called use-inheritance go together for a thou- sand years. In the fourteenth century the revival of learning began, and uni- versities were founded at Lyons, Avignon, Orleans, Perugia, Hei- delberg, Coimbra and Vienna. In the fifteenth century we have the invention of printing, and thereafter we have a continually increas- ing amount of education diffused, first through the ruling classes, and afterwards gradually extending to the masses. The theory of use-inheritance demands that accompanying this there should be an increasing number of persons having considerable mental ability,, and that mental ability should rise to higher and higher levels as the centuries pass. 68 BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. RECORD OF THE CENTURIES. In the back part of the fourth volume of the Encyclopedic Dic- tionary (edition of 1895) there is a "Pronouncing Dictionary of Biography," containing about nine thousand names. As the list contains the names Smith, Jones and Brown, it is evident that ' 'pro- nouncing" is not the criterion by which names are included or ex- cluded, but that there are included the names of those who have achieved greatness by some means or other. Opposite each name is the date of birth and death as far as known. To determine how far // 77 37? t/t // FIG. 1. DISTRIBUTION OF EMINENT MEN GIVEN IN PRONOUNCING DICTIONARY. this list of eminent men would confirm or contradict the theory of use-inheritance as applied to modern Europe, I tabulated the entire list by their births, arranging them in centuries. The result of this tabulation is given in Fig. i. This diagram shows that before the revival of learning Europe produced very few men who were eminent enough to have their names preserved in a Pronouncing Dictionary of Biography, while immediately following the revival the number increased rapidly and BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. 69 continued to increase from generation to generation. An examin- ation of the list also shows that, of those belonging to the period prior to the fifteenth century, the majority are entitled to have their names in this list only from the fact that they were hereditary mon- archs, or princes who became involved in some of the wars of the period. On the other hand, the majority of those included in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have their names included be- cause they exhibited great mental power. ONE HUNDRED GREATEST MEN. In 1900 Charles Denby, former United States Minister to China, and John Q. Howard, of the Library of Congress, joined in compiling a list of the one hundred greatest men in the world's his- tory. The list begins with Homer and ends with Edison, thus cov- ering a period of 2,800 years. I have subjected this list to the same test so as to locate the men of greatest intellect. In the first 1,200 years of this time there were fifteen men, being Greeks and Romans. In the next 1,200 years there are twelve men, being one in each cen- tury except the eleventh, which has two, and the twelfth, which has none. Of these twelve men, all but Alfred the Great, Gutenberg and Dante, are either religious reformers or soldiers. These three are the only representatives of statesmanship, invention and litera- ture in twelve centuries. In the remaining four centuries we have seventy-three men, fifty-three of whom come in the classes of states- manship, science, invention and literature. Of the one hundred greatest men in the world's history, we have seventy-three per cent of them concentrated in one-seventh of the time, and that one-sev- enth is located at the place where use-inheritance calls for it to be located. 7O BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. On page 125 of "Darwinism and Race Progress," Haycraft says: "The doors of every profession were barred except to those who possessed capital, and the children of the poor were frequently un- able to obtain even the elements of book knowledge, except in Scot- land, where primary education had the start of England by three hundred years," Two pages further on he says : "One can hardly explain, on the assumption of race superiority alone, the wonderful potentiality of the Scottish Lowlands, the birthplace of so many who have been distinguished for personal attainments, for the East Coast Englishman is the same blood as the Lowlander, and the division between England and Scotland is by no means an ethnological one ; it is, rather, a political division of the old Kingdom of Northumberland." And yet Professor Haycraft denies the existence of use-inheri- tance and attempts to explain this on the fortuitous nature of oppor- tunities. Galton, who has made a special study of human heredity, and who is perhaps the first person to deny use-inheritance, tells us that when a man is born with tremendous intellectual power, the lack of opportunities is nothing. He will make his opportunities. EDUCATION IN AMERICA. The same distinction that Professor Haycraft mentions between Scotland and England has existed in the United States between the North and South. When the Pilgrims landed on the inhospitable coast of New England they immediately planted the "little red school house," and never since have they failed to maintain it, nor have they failed to supplement it with colleges and universities. In BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. 7! the South an exactly opposite policy was pursued, except in the case of a few who were slave-holders. In 1671, when the population of Virginia was estimated at 40,000, Sir William Berkeley, the then governor, wrote: "I thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both." Of the great men produced in the United States, very few indeed have come from the South, and those who have come from there have had ancestries which were exceptions to the general rule. An invention is the product of a mind capable of moving un- aided through unexplored realms. It is an evidence of intellectual power and is largely independent of the educational opportuni- ties of the individual who made it. The inventions produced in the Northern and Southern portions of the United States are a very good index of the mental ability of the inhabitants of the two sec- tions. In the South there is annually produced one invention for each 17,000 of the population; in the Northern states the produc- tion is annually ten inventions for each 17,000, and in Connecticut it is nineteen. And yet the people of the South are of the same stock as those from the North. The ancestors of both came from England. If there was any original difference in the mental powers of the two, that difference was in favor of the Southern immigrants. It is true that England dumped some of her pauper stock on Vir- ginia in the seventeenth century, but the "F. F. Vs." also contained such men as Washington, the Randolphs, the Lees, and the Mar- shalls, families which had achieved fame before coming to America, and which were the peers of anything that New England could show. 72 BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. EXPLANATION OF NEO-DARWINIANS. We thus see that our deduction from the theory of use-inheri- tance is supported by history at all points. But the Neo-Darwinians object to this interpretation of history. They insist that education goes no further than to furnish opportunities for the mind which is potentially great to educate itself and thus become great in fact. This explanation would imply that congenitally great intellects were just as common during the dark ages as at present, and that the reason why we have no record of them is partly because of the lack of records and partly because the lack of education robbed many of them of their opportunities. But this explanation of the Neo-Dar- winians does not account for the advance in relative greatness after educational facilities were obtained. Neither does it account for a man like Franklin, who had no educational facilities other than such as he made for himself. Nor does it account for the fact, which will be shown later, that there never has been produced a brain having a great functional capacity except as a descendant from a man who had previously made large use of his brain. WEISMANN'S STATEMENT. The explanation, however, is forced by the theory of continuity of the germ plasm and the apparent impossibility of such a thing as brain-use affecting in the remotest degree a material so completely isolated. Weismann says: "The germ cells arise in their essential and distinctive substances, not by any means from the body of the individual, but directly from the parent germ cells. Inheritance takes place wholly and solely because a substance of definite chemical, and above all, molecular composition, passes over from the germ cells of one generation to BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. 73 those of the next. This substance, the germ plasm, is located in the cell-nucleus, and possesses, by virtue of its extraordinary complex- ity of structure, the capacity to develop into a very complex organ- ism. The germ cells of successive generations are related in the same way as a series of generations of unicellular beings which are derived, one from another, by continued divisions." Weismann's statements are quite positive and he is probably as competent as any one to speak of the elements and origin of germ- plasm, but when his theories in regard to them force an explanation which is inconsistent with known facts we cannot do otherwise but consider such an explanation unsatisfactory. CHAPTER IV. BASIS OF INVESTIGATION, CONTINUED. In investigating the origin of great men, the first noticeable thing is that they are usually sons of prominent men. At this point investigators, knowing the facts of inheritance, jump to the conclusion that superior men are produced only from superior an- cestry and inferior men only from inferior ancestry, irrespective of the fact that both had common ancestors some generations back. This common ancestry of superior and inferior men is well shown in the cases of Cromwell and Charles I, who were distant cousins. Of course there is the explanation that the remote ancestor is repre- sented in a very small measure in the two descendants, that on one side there were intermarriages with superior, and on the other side with inferior persons, and that spontaneous variations in the germ cells made up the difference. As there is no evidence that the col- lateral branch going to Cromwell married persons superior to those which the royal line secured, we have assumption upon as- sumption made necessary by deduction from an elaborate theory re- garding mysterious occurrences in the germ cells. USE AND DISUSE DEFINED. The word use, in a biological sense, means an amount of use greater than enough to bring an individual to, and maintain it at, the average functional capacity of the race or species to which it belongs; while the word disuse means an amount of use less than enough to bring the individual to, and maintain it at, such a stan- dard. Use and disuse are, therefore, relative and not absolute terms. 74 BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. 75 The amount of use necessary to bring the individual to, and main- tain it at, the average functional capacity of the species to which it belongs may be called average use, and the amount necessary for any particular individual may be called normal use. Before an in- dividual can arrive at the average functional capacity of the species to which it belongs it must have passed from the adolescent to the adult stage. The distance into the adult stage which an individual must pass to arrive at the average for its species depends partly upon its inherited functional capacity and partly upon the degree of its functional activity. Hence the acquired functional capacity of an individual is represented by the absolute use minus the normal use. In this connection it should be remembered that the normal use for a particular individual is not a fixed aggregate of use, but varies with the age of the individual. Thus, after an individual has ar- rived at the average functional capacity of its species it must con- tinue its normal use for the purpose of maintaining itself at this standard. If the individual fails to continue this normal use it falls below the standard and we have a case of disuse. Ordinarily the normal use and the average use do not differ much, but, when an individual possesses an organ endowed by heredity with great func- tional capacity the normal use is much less than the average use, and, conversely, when an individual inherits less than the average functional capacity the normal use becomes greater than the average use. THE MEASURE OF USE-INHERITANCE. From our definition of the word use, it is evident that to have use-inheritance in a descendant, there must have been, on the part of the ancestor, an aggregate use greater than the normal use for such ancestor. Stated in other words, use-inheritance is to be meas- ured by the amount of use for each ancestor and not by the aggre- 76 BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. gate use in a given period of time and independent of the number of ancestors within that time. This may be made still clearer by re- membering that use-inheritance means the inheritance of acquired functional capacity, and that unless an individual acquires a func- tional capacity above the average of its ancestors it will not have an acquirement which it can transmit. As use really means surplus use on the part of the individual, or use more than the normal use, it is evident that the functional capacity acquired by use is made up of two factors, viz., functional activity of the individual and time. We may assume for conven- ience that the capacity acquired is proportional to the time occu- pied in its acquirement. Thus if an individual acquire m capacity in time t, then capacity 2m will be acquired in time 2t. While not strictly true, this is approximately true during the period within which the individual may continue to acquire functional capacity. AGE AT COMPLETE DEVELOPMENT. Under uniform conditions the healthy man usually attains his best physical development between twenty-five and thirty, and main- tains it to some time between forty and fifty. Occasionally he comes to physical maturity at an earlier age, and sometimes he retains his strength beyond fifty and even beyond sixty. Under conditions which are not uniform he may, by physical training at a particu- lar time, reach his greatest development at any age between twenty- five and sixty, or even seventy. When a man who has passed the age of twenty-five takes up systematic physical culture, the func- tional capacity of his muscles will develop rapidly under the stimu- lus of muscular activity. Within a few months or a year he reaches a physical strength and development beyond which further training will not carry him. In this we have a case of use consisting of BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. 77 extreme functional activity carried on through a considerable period of time. If, after acquiring physical development through special training, he desists from further exercise, his strength and activity will drop away rapidly and to a considerable extent. Then we would have a case of use followed by disuse. The amount in which strength will fall away by disuse will depend upon the length of time during which training was continued. If training be con- tinued for only a short time, then strength would fall away rapidly, while if continued a long time it would fall away less rapidly and to a less extent. GROWTH OF THE BRAIN. The growth and development of the brain are similar to those of the IxDdy, but are continued for a much longer time. The brain differs from the body in that its functional capacity may be enor- mously increased without apparent increase in its size. For what length of time the brain continues to grow in size is uncertain, but it appears that the time is extended and the brain is made more capacious by intellectual activity. In Fig. 2 I give Galton's dia- gram of brain growth as determined by him from students at the University of Cambridge, England. The original diagram is lim- ited to twenty-five years of age, but I have extended it by dotted lines to thirty-three, to illustrate the probable growth to that period. From personal observation I find that in spite of my hair growing thin I wear a slightly larger hat than I found necessary at the age of thirty. From this it would appear that either hats have grown smaller or the growth of the brain continues beyond thirty. The functional capacity, however, continues to increase long after the limit of size is attained. Time is, therefore, an important element in brain development, and it becomes evident that there can be BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. no appearance of use-inheritance applied to brain power unless the parent has lived many years before reproducing. The dependence and relationship of acquired functional capac- ity of the brain upon time is recognized and may be illustrated in many ways. In common law the individual is not supposed to know enough to take care of himself before twenty-one. The Consti- tution of the United States says he is not eligible to become a Rep- *s* SL3 , i, J* AGES. W 4.X PIG. 2. GALTON'S DIAGRAM (EXPANDED) OF BRAIN GROWTH. resentative before twenty-five, is not competent to be a Senator until thirty, and not wise enough to be President until thirty-five. HYPOTHETICAL COMMUNITY. Let us assume a mining camp with one hundred men whose ages vary from twenty to thirty, the majority of whom have more than ordinary native intelligence, and many of whom have had the bene- fits of a college education; let us assume, also, that there comes to this community a man of fair intelligence, who is fifty years of age, who had in his youth only limited opportunities for education, but who has had a wide experience in many parts of the world under BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. 79 many diverse circumstances; then, in our hypothetical community this older man will immediately become the most prominent man there. He will know better than any one else what to do and how to do it. He will be the arbitrator in disputes and probably will become the Justice of the Peace or the first Mayor of the embryo town. All this will be because his years have developed his brain so that it has a greater functional capacity than the brains of his associates. According to the theory of use-inheritance this man could, from a given mother, beget a more intelligent son than could any other man in the hypothetical community. If the son of such a man should become eminent, we would have an illustration of the ordinary saying that eminent men are the sons of prominent men. But saying that an eminent man is the son of a prominent man is only another way of saying that he is the son of an educated man, because a man is prominent only because of the education he has acquired. PROMINENCE DEFINED. A prominent man is one whose brain has great functional capac- ity. While absorbing facts is a function of the brain, it is not the particular function which produces prominence. That function is the power of using known facts and previous experience in the solu- tion of any problem that may arise, and is usually designated by the words judgment, discretion, and intelligence. The relative development of the body and the brain is illus- trated diagrammatically in Fig. 3, in which the line A represents the bodily development, B the development of the brain, and C the development of the man as a whole. If we assume that these lines represent the normal development of a healthy man, then the theory of use-inheritance would say that his child with the best physical So BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. constitution would be born when he was thirty-five, the child with the best brain when he was sixty, and the best all-around child when he was between forty-five and fifty. Cup*. 2.0 y FIG. 3. DIAGRAM OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE BRAIN AND BODY. FORMULA FOR HEREDITY. To express the matter mathematically let : T=age of ancestor at time of reproduction. t=average age of reproduction of the race. ^r^age at which ancestor reaches average development with K activity. K=grade of mental activity of ancestor. k=average mental activity of the race. k x =:grade of mental activity required to maintain ancestor in uniform condition. m change arising from K-k activity in a unit of time. M=average race inheritance. Q=inheritance of any individual. Then :- CT-t 1 ) mCT-t 1 ) mCT-t 1 ) mlT-t 1 ) 2 4 8 16 will express the inheritance of an individual as received from a sin- ?. *?; W COPERNICUS [(77+x)-r-2] BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. 8 1 gle line of ancestors. If all of the ancestors are included then the equation will be =M+m ( T-t 1 ) +m ( T-t 1 The denominators in the first equation represent the number of an- cestors in that generation. When all of the ancestors of a gen- eration are included the denominator of that term disappears and m(T-t 1 ) represents the average of them all. EXPLANATION OF THE FORMULA. In any particular case the term T may usually be determined from the biography of the individual ; t may be determined by sta- tistics ; t 1 does not usually differ much from t } . but will be greater or less according to what the ancestor inherited from his ancestors; K is usually an unknown quantity, but an indication of its relative value may sometimes be determined from biography ; k may be gen- erally estimated from known conditions, being greater for Caucas- ians than for Chinese, greater for Chinese than for Negroes, and greater for Negroes than for Fuegians; and M may be estimated in the same manner as k. Whether the individual rises above or falls below the average of the race depends upon two factors, of which m may be considered as unknown, while T-t 1 may be calcu- lated. If T be less than t 1 , i. e., if reproduction takes place at ah early age, then T-t 1 will be a minus quantity and the descendant will fall below the average. If T be larger than t 1 , then the rise or fall will depend upon whether the value of K makes m an increasing or decreasing quantity. With man m is usually an increasing quan- tity up to about the age of sixty. It will therefore be apparent that the value of Q will be largely dependent upon the value of T, and that it cannot be large unless T is large. 82 BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. RECAPITULATION. Use-inheritance means the inheritance of acquired functional capacity. Before there can be such an inheritance a parent must acquire a functional capacity above the average of the species to which it belongs. The acquirement of such a functional capacity demands a functional activity above the normal. To have the func- tional capacity large the functional activity must have continued for a considerable time, and it is largest when the activity is continued as long as there is any increase in capacity. Applied to the brain of man, the amount of acquired functional capacity would, within limits, be proportional to the length of time devoted to its acquire- ment, and would be greatest in comparatively old men. Hence, if there be such a thing as the inheritance of acquired functional capac- ity, it should be most marked in the descendants of old men, and conversely, if it can be shown that the inherited functional capacity of individuals is proportional to the age of their parents at the time of reproduction, that fact would be evidence of the inheritance of such acquirements. Furthermore, such evidence, if obtained, would not be explainable on any other theory than use-inheritance, because there is no other imaginable reason why great men should only be produced by old fathers. CHAPTER V. STANDARD OF COMPARISON. The Hall of Fame is a building connected with the New York University, and was erected to perpetuate the memory of famous men of American birth. The men selected to have their names in- scribed in the Hall of Fame were chosen by ballot, the electors being one hundred 1 eminent men college presidents, educators, professors of history, scientists, publicists, editors, authors, and judges of the State and National Supreme Courts. The first election, held in October, 1900, resulted in the choice of twenty-nine men. These twenty-nine men and the number of votes each received are as fol- lows: George Washington 97 Nathaniel Hawthorne 73 Abraham Lincoln 96 George Peabody 72 Daniel Webster 96 Robert E. Lee 69 Benjamin Franklin 94 Peter Cooper 69 Ulysses S. Grant 92 Eli Whitney 67 John Marshall 91 John J. Audubon 67 Thomas Jefferson , 90 Horace Mann 67 Ralph W. Emerson 87 Henry Ward Beecher 66 Henry W. Longfellow .... 85 James Kent 65 Robert Fulton 85 Joseph Story 64 Washington Irving 83 John Adams 61 Jonathan Edwards 81 William E. Channing 58 Samuel F. B. Morse 80 Gilbert Stuart 52 David G. Farragut 79 Asa Gray 51 Henry Clay 74 These men, selected by ballot as they were, may be considered as America's most famous men, and the relative measure of their (i) Only 97 voted. 83 84 STANDARD OF COMPARISON. * fame may be represented by the respective number of ballots which they received. As a preliminary to our investigation I have chosen to take these twenty-nine men and apply to them our test of ances- tral use as it will appear from the ages at which reproduction oc- curred. My reason for choosing to begin with this list is because I find it already made up, and consequently it cannot be charged that it was selected with reference to the age of their parents at the time they were born. Another reason is that I can trace the ancestry of these men more completely than I can that of any simi- lar group of men not specially selected with that object in view, and it is part of my plan to trace a few in an elaborate manner to serve as a basis for the larger group of men which I shall discuss in a succeeding chapter. SOURCE OF STANDARD SCALE. It is one thing to state that a child's parents were of certain specified ages when the child was born, and quite another thing to know what that statement means after it is made. It is therefore evident that before we can draw any just conclusions in regard to the birth-ranks of these men we must establish a standard by which to measure them, and that this standard must not only tell us the average age of parents when children are born, but must give us a number of subdivisions so that we may locate each individual at his proper place in the scale. To produce such a standard I have taken the "Redfield Genealogy" (edition of 1860), and have cal- culated the ages of parents for the recorded births in the eighteenth century. I have chosen the eighteenth century partly because the records for that century are fairly complete, and partly because the majority of these famous men were born during that century. The Redfields born at that time were mostly born in Connecticut, or in substantially the latitude of Connecticut, which is also ap- STANDARD OF COMPARISON. 85 proximately the latitude in which the majority of these famous men were born. If there be any difference, the Redfields were born slightly further north. These Redfields were neither eminent statesmen nor day laborers, but average examples of New England citizens. They were largely farmers, with a sprinkling of mer- chants, sailors and professional men. Many of them, like other Americans of the eighteenth century, married early and produced large families, and consequently their births extended over a wide range and exhibited nearly all possible combinations. HOW STANDARD SCALE IS MADE. In making up my standard for comparison I have taken only those cases in which the family record was complete, and have ex- cluded every family in which one or more births could not be accurately determined. By adding a few births occurring in the first decade of the nineteenth century I managed to obtain the ages of the fathers for 240 births, and the ages of the mothers for 180 births. I then divided these births into ten equal groups, which I tabulated as follows: TABLE I. AGES OF PARENTS AT BIRTH OF THEIR CHILDREN. (Ten per cent in each class.) Fathers. Class. Mothers. Under 24-6 a Under 22-0 Between 24-6 and 27-1 b Between 22-0 and 24-1 " 27-1 and 28-1 1 c 24-1 and 25-9 " 28-1 1 and 30-9 d 25-9 and 27-5 " 309 and 32-8 e 27-5 and 29-2 32-8 and 34-9 E 29-2 and 31-0 34-9 and 37-3 D 31-0 and 33-7 37-3 and 40-0 C 33-7 and 35-10 40-0 and 44-6 B 35-10 and 39-10 Over 44-6 A Over 39-10 86 STANDARD OF COMPARISON. THE MEANING OF BIRTH-RANK. This table shows that ten per cent of the children were born when their fathers were less than 24 years and 6 months old, that ten per cent were born after the fathers were 24 years and 6 months old and before they had reached the age of 27 years and i month, and that the other sections of ten per cent each came between the ages specified, the last ten per cent being children of fathers over 44 years and 6 months of age. For mothers, ten per cent were born before the mothers were 22 years old, and ten per cent after they were 39 years and 10 months of age. The extreme ages of fathers range from 19 years to 65 years, and for mothers the range is from 1 6 years to 45 years. I have designated these classes by letters so that the earliest born ten per cent is represented by a and the latest ten per cent by A. The next per cent in order from either end of the scale is represented by b or B as the case may be, and so on, corresponding sections being represented by corresponding small and capital letters. A person born when his father was 33 years old will be spoken of as being born in class E. I shall also speak of such a person as having the "birth-rank E" or the "birth-rank 33," the two terms being used interchangeably. John Smith [42] will means that John Smith was born when his father was 42 years x>ld and consequently that John Smith's birth rank is 42. SUBDIVISIONS OF SCALE. Prom the nature of our investigation it will be evident that the two extremes of our scale are the most important, the intermediate portions being more or less indifferent or neutral. I have therefore subdivided the classes a and A as follows : STANDARD OF COMPARISON. 87 5 per cent of births are to fathers over 51-0 A 2 2 " " " " " 57-oA 3 5 " " " " " under 23-0 a 2 2 " " " " " " 21-4 a? SCALE TESTED. Dr. Duncan 2 gives the ages of mothers for 16,385 births as determined at the Dublin Lying-in Hospital between 1850 and 1860, and also the ages of mothers for 16,301 births as registered in Edinburg and Glasgow in 1855. He also gives 3 a similar record for Finland and Sweden, with the exception that in the last case the births are the total for the whole population and amount to 100,057. Comparing these with the female record as I have determined it from the Redfield Genealogy, we have the following table: TABLE II. PERCENTAGE OF CHILDREN AT DIFFERENT AGES OF MOTHERS. Ages ....15-19 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-4950+ Dublin 4.65 29.67 32.40 23.29 7.38 2.42 .13 .03 Edinburg and Glasgow.. 2.30 22.62 30.89 23.61 14.76 5.15 ..58 .03 Finland and Sweden . . 3.29 16.50 26.32 25.61 18.08 8.51 1.69 Redfields, iSthcen.. 3.33 22.78 28.33 21.63 14-44 8.88 .57 From this table it will be seen that Ireland stands at the extreme of early reproduction and Finland and Sweden at the extreme of late production, while Scotland and America are intermediate and close together. Finland and Sweden being very cold climates and (2) Fecundity, Fertility, and Sterility, p. 7. (3) Ibid., p. IS. 88 STANDARD OF COMPARISON. the age of puberty being considerably affected by temperature, these countries present an exceptional condition which is not applicable to America and Europe in general. I shall therefore ignore them and make my comparison more particularly with Ireland and Scot- land. I can do this better because the statistics for these last men- tioned countries are more complete and reliable than for Finland and Sweden. The following table giving the ages of mothers for different percentage of children, shows that while the Redfield mothers of the eighteenth century began reproduction a little earlier than the Scotch mothers of the middle of the nineteenth century, the average age of reproduction was higher and was continued to a later age. In other words, the standard here adopted is somewhat high as compared to Scotland, and markedly high as compared to Ireland, and consequently it will operate against, rather than in favor of, the theory that eminent men should, as a whole, have birth- ranks above the average. TABLE III. AGES OF MOTHERS FOR DIFFERENT PERCENTAGES OF CHILDREN. Proportion of children. Redfields. Scotland. Ireland. 10 per cent under 22-0 22-4 21-2 50 per cent under 29-2 28-11 27-3 90 per cent under 39- 10 39-6 35-0 TEST BY INSURANCE RECORDS. The above comparisons have been made with different classes of mothers because the statistics were in a form that would enable me to do so, but I am able also to make a comparison between American fathers of the eighteenth century and Irish, fathers from 1830 to 1841. Prof. Miles quotes from Walford's Insurance STANDARD OF COMPARISON. 89 Cyclopedia, Vol. III., p. 189, a series of tables showing the ages of fathers for the births of 977,446 children. From these tables I am able to calculate the percentage of children for different ages of Irish fathers which I have put into a table that will compare them with the fathers used in our standard. This table shows a very marked difference, and that the ages of Irish fathers and Irish mothers are almost identical. While it is a fact that where mar- riages are early there is less difference between the ages of husbands and wives than where marriages are late, I doubt if this table repre- sents the whole truth. What is apparent, however, is that our adopted standard is a high one, and one that is higher than would have been the case if I had adopted the available statistics instead of obtaining my own from an original source. TABLE IV. PERCENTAGE OF CHILDREN AT DIFFERENT AGES OF FATHERS. Fathers. Ireland, Redfields, 1 9th century. i8th century. Under 17 .39 17 to 25 46.18 15.42 26 to 35 45-53 49-58 36 to 45 6.92 26.25 46 to 55 .86 5.83 Over 55 .12 2.92 MARRIAGES GROWING LATER. It is a well recognized and often commented upon fact that, for the last century or more, marriages have been growing later and later, and in comparing my standard with the recorded marriages of Redfields during the first half of the nineteenth century I find that this is true of this particular group of persons. Remembering 90 STANDARD OF COMPARISON. that our comparisons were between reproductions a century apart, it will be seen that there is another reason for thinking that our standard is, if anything, abnormally high. To still further test the matter, I compared the average ages of the marriages from which our standard of births are taken with the ages recorded in marriage licenses issued in Chicago at different times during 1900, and I find that they are almost identical, although there is a differ- ence of more than a century of time between them. Though there are so many reasons for considering the adopted standard as being high, I have still decided to retain it because it is a definite and known standard of known accuracy, and because, if the men measured by it are found to be high in comparison to it, it will be known that they are absolutely high, and will be relatively high as compared to any standard that may be made from the mass of human beings. INTERPRETATION OF MEASUREMENTS BY THE SCALE. Having adopted a standard of birth-ranks, and having divided this standard so that it becomes a scale of equal divisions, the law of probabilities declares that if we take any miscellaneous group of men and find their birth-ranks, it will be found that they are pretty evenly distributed along the length of the scale. A deduction from this law is that if we take a selected group of men and compare their birth-ranks with a standard scale of birth-ranks, then if we find that there is an unusual accumulation at a certain part of the scale or an unusual absence of cases at some other part of the scale, this accumulation or this absence must be in some way connected with the manner in which that group of men was selected. This de- duction is very old and well known. Aristotle recognized it when he held that anything which occurs regularly cannot be the result of STANDARD OF COMPARISON. 9 1 Chance, but must occur because of some definite law. Since Aris- totle's time, the law of probabilities has been demonstrated so many times that no one any longer questions it. Vast business enterprises and even gamblers depend upon the law of probabilities for their profits. Any one who wishes to test the law of probabilities can easily do so by throwing dice. Each die is a cube having its sides marked with from one to six spots so arranged that the sum of the opposite sides equals seven. If any one throws two dice he may get two aces, the sum of which is two; or he may get two sixes, the sum of which is twelve ; but if he throws the pair ten times the sum will be very near seventy, or an average of seven. In one hundred throws the average would be still nearer seven, and in one thousand throws the average would never vary from seven more than a minute fraction. THE SCALE AND THE LAW OF PROBABILITIES. Having established a standard scale of birth-ranks and having twenty-five men 4 whose births we wish to apply to this scale, it follows from the law of probabilities that we should find two or three births in each one of the ten classes. It also follows that if we take the birth-ranks of the immediate ancestors of these twenty- five men we should also find their births evenly distributed along the scale. From the manner in which the scale was made and its comparison with what it would have been if made from other sources, it is evident that whatever deviation there is from an exactly uniform distribution, that deviation should be in favor of placing the larger number in the classes represented by the small letters (4) Four of the twenty-nine have been omitted from consideration because of the impossibility of finding dates relating to their ancestors. This should not affect the result, because there is no reason why unknown persons should differ from known ones. 92 STANDARD OF COMPARISON. rather than in the classes represented by the capital letters. If there be no relationship between the mental ability of a child and the age of the father when that child was born, then, according to the law of probabilities, the men of the greatest intellects are just as likely to appear at one part of the scale as at another, and that there is nothing to cause two or more of superior intellectual capacity to appear close together. Conversely, if several men having intellects manifestly superior to others appear close together, and especially if they are grouped at one extreme of the scale, then that fact is explainable only by some cause outside of the law of probabilities. Furthermore, if it should appear that the mental greatness of these men was closely proportional to their relative positions on the scale, that proportional ism could only be explainable on the theory that the inherited mental capacity of a child depends upon the age of the parents at the time the child was born. FAME VERSUS MENTAL GREATNESS. Before passing from this branch of the subject I must call atten- tion to the fact that fame is not always commensurate with mental greatness. If it were, then Tom Thumb and the Siamese twins would be considered as intellectual giants because they certainly were famous in their day. It is therefore evident that the relative positions of these men in fame is not necessarily their relative positions when we come to consider them purely in respect to their mental powers. In studying these men from the intellectual stand- point we must consider what they have done, and must eliminate from such consideration any halo of glory that depends for its luster on some spectacular achievement. CHAPTER VI. HALL OF FAME MEN. In carrying out this inquiry into the ancestors of the Hall of Fame Men, I made for each person a diagram like the following one given for Beecher: Yale. D? Lyman Beecher, b. 1775-10-12 E? David Beecher. b. . Roxanna Foote, b. 1775-9-10 3rd. wife. e. Esther Lyman, b. 1749-2-17... Lawyer. d. Eli Foote, b. 1747-10-30.... B? Roxanna Ward, b. . A. C. {Nathaniel Beecher... Joseph, about 1658 b. 1706-4-7. Sarah Sperry. D. John Lyman Bbenezer, b. 1682. b. 1717-5-28. Hope Hawley. D. [ Daniel Foote Nathaniel, b. 1682. I b. 1717-2-6. I Margaret Parsons. C? Gen. Andrew Ward.. Col. Andrew, b. This shows that Henry Ward Beecher was born June 24, 1813, and was the son of Lyman Beecher, who was born October 12, 1775, and was graduated at Yale College. We thus see that the father of Henry was not only given an education that developed his brain in youth, but that he was more than thirty-eight years of age when his son was born, and consequently had had a great many years in which to use his brain, and the opportunity to transmit the effects of such use, if there is such a thing as use-inheritance. The date of birth of Lyman's father David is not given, so we cannot 93 94 HALL OF FAME MEN. know accurately what birth-rank Lyman takes, but we find that David's father, Nathaniel, was born April 7, 1706. This gives a trifle over 69 years and 6 months between Lyman and his grand- father, which period may be divided so as to locate one person in class D and the other in class E. It matters little, as far as our investigation is concerned, at what point the division is made, because there is a total of nearly seventy years, less two periods of growth from infancy to maturity. If the division be made unequally, what is subtracted from one person is added to the other. In such cases as this I have made the divisions nearly equal unless there was some collateral reason for doing otherwise. In the present case we find that Lyman was the son of David's third wife, so that the probabilities are that David was comparatively old when Lyman was born, consequently I have given the higher rank to Lyman. In his autobiography, Lyman Beecher tells us that his father David, though self-taught, was one of the best educated persons in New England, consequently we have another opportunity for use-inherit- ance by a long period of mental activity. Pushing the inquiry further, we find that David's father, Nathaniel, was born when his father Joseph was about 46, and I also find that Joseph was born when his father Isaac was about 38. In thus running back the male line of Henry Ward Beecher's ancestors, we find five successive births from fathers, all of whom had lived considerably more than the average number of years before their sons were born. The result was Henry Ward Beecher, a man whose mental greatness was of such a calibre that he seemed to be able to meet any emer- gency with the easy superiority that characterizes a man who is born with a great brain in contradistinction to one who achieves great- ness only by extraordinary exertions. If it be conceded that there is such a thing as use-inheritance, then this examination into the. HALL OF FAME MEN. 95 ancestry of Henry Ward Beecher gives a plain explanation of his great mental ability, while if we deny use-inheritance, then there is no explanation and we have to simply assume that in some mys- terious manner there was a series of advantageous variations. In running through the female ancestry, we find Henry's mother, Roxanna Foote, as born in class c from her father, who was edu- cated as a lawyer. If we assume that / a 3 f the whole population, and is equivalent to class D. If we add together the whole series of births and divide by their number, we find the average of 137 to be thirty-five years, six months and twenty-nine flays, or nearly three years above the average for the whole country. It is only proper to say, however, that a small part of these 137 births are estimated from the best information at hand, but in making such estimates I have purposely made them as low as appeared reasonable so as to avoid the error of exaggeration. Whatever the error be, it is so small in the aggregate that it could not affect the average more than a few days or a month at most. If we arrange the list by the average ages of all the ancestors of each man, instead of by the fame of the men, as in the first instance, or by their individual birth-ranks, as in the second in- stance, we have the arrangement shown in Table VI. The most notable thing in this list is the relative rise of Lincoln and Gray and the fall of Adams. Another notable feature is the uniformity of average ages of all ancestors as shown in the last column. From this column it is seen that in seventeen cases the average for all is above the average for the country, and that only eight are below the average. Furthermore, those above the dividing line of aver- age age extend through all grades to the highest birth-rank, while those below remain close to the line of division. The range is IIO HALL OF FAME MEN. from 22 years above the line to only 2^3 below. We also see that those below are, for the most part, those for whom the records are incomplete. TABLE VI. HALL OF FAME MEN BY AVERAGES OF KNOWN ANCESTRAL BIRTH- RANKS. No. of Aggregate Av. age births. years. at birth. 1 Franklin 4 219 54.75 2 Irving . 2 108 54 3 Audubon 2 108 54 4 Farragut i 45 45 5 Lincoln 4 157 39.25 6 Washington* 5 195 39 7 L ee 10 387 38.70 8 Hawthorne 8 309 38.60 9 Mann 4 149 37- 2 5 10 Story i 36 36 11 Beecher 11 393 35.72 12 Webster 7 249 35-57 13 Gray 7 248 35.50 14 Emerson 7 243 34-7O 15 Jefferson : . . . 3 104 34.66 16 Peabody 1 1 381 34.60 17 Edwards 6 207 34-5 18 Longfellow 8 262 32.50 19 Channing 7 226 32.29 20 Grant 4 130 32.25 21 Adams 8 258 32.24 22 Kent 4 128 32 23 Morse , 4 I2 7 31.75 24 Marshall 4 124 31 25 Whitney 3 90 30 HALL OF FAME MEN. Ill COLLEGE MEN AMONG ANCESTORS. The mid-position in this list is held by Asa Gray. Among the ancestors of the twelve persons above the center, there are known to be only seven college men, while in the ancestors of the twelve below there are known to be 23 college men, or at least men known FIG. 7 AVERAGE ANCESTRY OP TWENTY-FIVE HALL OF FAME MEN. to have had liberal educations. Making a diagram. (Fig. 7) for table VI, we see that the number of college men among the ances- tors is in inverse proportion to the ages of the ancestors at the birth of their offspring. The natural inference is that the mental activity arising from a college education given to an ancestor is a substi- tute in inheritance for age and experience. That it is not a full 112 HALL OF FAME MEN. substitute is seen from the fact that the greatest brains of all are not descended from college graduates but from ancestors who lived a great many years before their sons were born. Of about 150 known male ancestors of these 25 famous men, about one in five received a liberal education qualifying him to practice medi- cine, law or divinity. At the time these men lived not more than one in a hundred had such an education, hence it is apparent that a man's chances of becoming famous are increased twenty to one by having an educated ancestor. No matter how much we analyze the relationship of these men to their ancestors, each point of view presents a situation that accords perfectly with the theory of use-inheritance, while many of them are inconsistent with, and unexplainable by, any theory that denies use-inheritance. It would be an impossible task to arrange these twenty-five men in the order of their mental greatness, because no man is com- petent to properly estimate them. They have originally been arranged by ballot according to fame, and we have arranged them first by their own birth letters, and second by their combined ancestry. That the original arrangement is not satisfactory is apparent from the fact that fame is not necessarily commensurate with mental endowments, though there is certainly an approxima- tion between the two. That neither of the other arrangements is satisfactory will be evident from the fact that a man's greatness depends, First, upon his own mental activity, because no amount of hereditary endowment can make a man great if he does not exert himself, and Second, upon the four factors arising out of the mental activity and age of each of the two parents, the eight factors similarly aris- HALL OF FAME MEN. 113 ing from his four grandparents, and the correspondingly more numerous factors arising from his more remote ancestors. RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF FATHER AND MOTHER. Partly because the father is usually older than the mother, partly because he is usually the more mentally active of the two, and partly because characters acquired by one sex are usually trans- mitted more fully to the same sex than to the other sex, the father is more important in the mental heredity of a man than is the mother. On the other hand, the law by which characters are often transmitted in a dormant condition from a maternal grandfather to a grandson may make the mother an important factor, provided that her father was such. To get a somewhat better view of these twenty-five men they have been grouped in table VII by a combination between their ranks from their own letters and their birth-ranks from all ances- tors, and also by a combination embracing these two factors and the third factor of fame. The first of these groupings improves the "letter" grouping by bringing in the effect of more remote ancestors, and improves the "all ancestors" grouping by giving more importance to the immediate ancestors. The grouping by three elements improves the other combination by bringing fame to rectify, in a measure, the more or less fragmentary character of the "all ancestors" element. Fame also recognizes the mental activity of the individual, an element that is entirely absent from our ancestral investigations. On the other hand Fame brings in the error of recognizing what is spectacular in contradistinction to what is purely mental greatness. It is also somewhat influenced by prejudice, and by a lack of appreciation of the kind of work with which those who determine fame are not familiar. HALL OF FAME MEN. TABLE VII. By age and letters. 1 Franklin. 2 Audubon. 3 Irving. 4 Farragut. 5 Lee - 6 Washington. 7 Webster. 8 Mann. 9 Lincoln. 10 Beecher. 1 1 Story. 12 Jefferson. 13 Emerson. 14 Adams. 15 Hawthorne. 1 6 Edwards. 17 Peabody. 1 8 Gray. 19 Longfellow. 20 Kent. 21 Channing. 22 Grant. 23 Morse. 24 Marshall. 25 Whitney. By age, letters and fame. 1 Franklin. 2 Washington. 3 Irving. 4 Webster. 5 Farragut. 6 Audubon. 7 Lincoln. 8 Lee. 9 Jefferson. 10 Emerson. 1 1 Mann. 12 Beecher. 13 Edwards. 14 Hawthorne. 15 Story. 1 6 Longfellow. 17 Grant. 1 8 Peabody. 19 Adams. 20 Marshall. 21 Morse. 22 Kent. 23 Gray. 24 Channing. 25 Whitney. EXTREMES OF GROUPS. There is not much difference between these two groupings, and it would probably be difficult to say which was the better when considered from our standpoint. On the whole it may be taken HALL OF FAME MEN. 1 15 for granted that the grouping which contains the greatest number of elements is as nearly accurate as it is possible to make it. In the grouping by combined "letters" and "adl ancestors" we find Emer- son occupying the mid-position. If we compare those above Emerson, as a group, with those below, as another group, we cannot help being struck by the fact that those above are, as a class, mentally greater than those below. If we compare all five groupings with each other we find five men who never fall below the center position and four who never rise above the center. If we compare these two minor groups with each other, there will not be the least hesitancy in determining which group is made up of men of the greater native mental endowments. High in five groups. Low in five groups. Franklin. Peabody. Washington. Kent. Irving. Channing. Webster. Whitney. Farragut. CHAPTER VII. GREAT MEN OF ANCIENT TIMES. Before we proceed to investigate the ancestry of great men of all ages from all countries, it is proper that an explanation be given of the method by which results are arrived at. In some cases the date of the birth of the great man is given and that of his father is also given, in which event we have all the data necessary to locate exactly the great man's birth-rank. In a great many cases, how- ever, the father's birth is not given, but there is such collateral evidence that will enable us to locate it pretty accurately and thus arrive at results that are without sensible error. The manner in which these estimates are made may be best illustrated by an example. METHOD OF ESTIMATING. In the Cyclopedia I find that de Jussieu is the name of a French family of natural philosophers, who have been styled the "botanical dynasty" of France. The founder of the family, whose birth is not recorded, had a son Antoine, born in 1686, a son Bernard, born in 1699, and a third son whose name and birth are not given. This unrecorded brother had a son Antoine Laurent, born in 1748, and another but unrecorded son. This last unrecorded person had a son, Laurent Pierre, born in 1792. The problem is to construct an ancestry for Laurent Pierre de Jussieu, the date of the birth of not a single ancestor of whom is given. To do this a diagram is constructed as follows: 116 GREAT MEN OF ANCIENT TIMES. de Jussieu, born between 1639 an d 1666 say 1663. I I I Antoine, b. 1686. X-(i7o6?) Bernard, b. 1699. 1 I Antoine Laurent, X-(i749?) b. 1748. Adrian, b. 1797. [49] Laurent Pierre, b. 1792. As the original de Jussieu was probably not less than 20 when his son Antoine was born, and probably not more than 60 when Bernard was born, we have his birth located somewhere in the 27 years between 1639 and 1666. If the unrecorded son were born before 1686 or after 1699, then the birth of the original de Jussieu would be restricted within narrower limits. But as this would require an unnecessary assumption we can, for the present, pre- sume that he was an intermediate son. Having determined that the original de Jussieu was born between 1639 an< ^ 1666, he can, with perfect fairness, be assumed to have been born midway be- tween these extremes, or in 1652-3, and we may figure from this date to the birth of Laurent Pierre in 1792. To avoid an error, however, that might lead to exaggeration, I assume that he was as young as reasonable, say between 22 and 25, when Antoine was born. If we assume that he was not older than 23 when his son Antoine was born, then we have his birth located in 1663, a ^ ate as unfavorable to the theory of great age as is reasonable for us to assume. Then taking the difference between 1792 and 1663 Il8 GREAT MEN OF ANCIENT TIMES. we have 129 years as the least reasonable length of time elapsing between the birth of the founder of the family and that of Laurent Pierre. Dividing this by three we get an average of 43 years, which would give us three successive generations born in our class B. Applying these figures we find that the first unrecorded person was probably born about 1706, or later than Bernard, and the second unrecorded person probably about 1749. Inserting these dates in the diagram we find that they accord well with the known date of birth of Antoine Laurent. We know that Adrian, the son of Antoine Laurent, is in class A, because his father was 49 when he was born. We thus have in the de Jussieu family four births in class B and one in class A. Under such circumstances I have not hesitated to rank these persons in this way because I know that they cannot rank lower, while there is a possibility and even a probability that some of them rank higher. To bring these per- sons as low as class C would be to make Antoine born when the founder of the family was 13 years old or less, an assumption that is not only unreasonable but absurd. RELATIVE BIRTH-RANKS IN LARGE FAMILIES. In looking through biographical sketches, when no definite dates are given, we have to seize on such expressions as "eldest son," "youngest son," "third child," etc. Unaccompanied by information as to the size of the family, such expressions tell us very little, but when they are accompanied by the statement that the family consisted of 10, 12 or 15 persons, then they are very persuasive. To determine just what such expressions mean I had recourse again to the Redfield Genealogy. By tabulating a large number of families I found that in families of five, fifty per cent of the youngest children were equally divided between classes A and B; in families GREAT MEN OF ANCIENT TIMES. IIQ of seven, seventy-five per cent of the youngest were in classes A and B ; in families of nine there were no youngest born lower than class B ; and in families of eleven or more there were no youngest born in anything but class A. In families of larger sizes, up to eighteen, I found substantially the same thing, i. e., that seventy- five per cent of the seventh children, whether the youngest or an intermediate, were born in classes A and B, and in no case was an eleventh child born as low as class B. Consequently when I find that Loyola was the youngest of eleven children I do not hesitate to mark him as having been born in class A, while as a matter of fact he may belong in sub-class A 2 or sub-class A 3 . These illustrations will give an idea of how estimates have sometimes been made when actual facts are not known. I have, however, been careful not to make estimates except where the facts warranted them, and when estimates have been made I have endeav- ored to err on the side of reducing the age of the father rather than increasing it. In certain special cases I have used special modes of estimating. In a number of such cases I will call atten- tion to the fact of the estimate and explain how the result is reached. GREATEST MEN IN BIBLE HISTORY. Turning first to Biblical history, we find four men standing out more prominently for wisdom and intelligence than any others. These are Joseph, Moses, David and Solomon. Joseph was the eleventh son (not child) of Jacob, who was the son of Isaac when he was advanced in years, and Isaac was born so late in the life of his parents that his mother, Sarai, laughed to scorn the idea that she was still young enough to have a 'child. According to the Bible chronology, Abraham was 99 when Isaac was born; Isaac was 59 when Jacob was born ; and Jacob was 92 when Joseph was 120 GREAT MEN OF ANCIENT TIMES. born. Whatever may be thought of the accuracy of these figures, there can be no doubt whatever that these generations were slowly moving ones. When we look further back than Abraham we find six or eight rapidly moving generations of nobodies. In other words, we find that the Biblical record of ages corresponds exactly with the Biblical estimate of greatness. As there does not appear to be anything in the history itself requiring that this should be so, we may conclude that it is an accurate, or at least a relatively accurate, statement of facts as they existed. As it corresponds exactly with the theory of use-inheritance as here explained, I cer- tainly have no reason to question its accuracy. REMARKABLE ANCESTRY OF MOSES. Moses was the son of Amram, who was the son of Kohath, who was the son of Levi. From the birth of Levi to the birth of Moses was 185 years, which divided by three gives 61% years for each generation. Amram married his aunt, consequently the mother of Moses must have been the daughter of a very old man. Moses was three years younger than Aaron, and his sister, at the time of his birth, was old enough to be trusted with the very delicate diplo- matic mission of interviewing the daughter of Pharaoh. What- ever may be the actual figures for the ancestry of Moses there can be no doubt but he takes a high birth-rank. Levi was the brother of Joseph and takes the birth-rank of [81] from his father Jacob. The previous ancestry we have already traced back in the case of Joseph, so that we have for Moses six generations in which not a single one has a birth-rank less than [59]- This is a most extraordinary ancestry and is not paralleled by any other known record. While these figures are extraordinary they are not actually past belief. The elder Cato had a son when GREAT MEN OF ANCIENT TIMES. 121 he was eighty, as was the case of Leslie, the British theological author, and "Old Parr" is said to have had two children after he had passed eighty years of age. The father of Fox, the statesman, had a birth-rank of [78], and Amelie Rives, the authoress, had a birth-rank of [71]. Nor is there any reason for doubting the substantial accuracy of these ages. Moses was a finely educated man who lived in an age and a country in which there was an educated class, and if he wrote the records so as to deceive pos- terity he did something which is at variance with every other act of his life. Nor is there any conceivable reason why he should do such a thing. It is not at all necessary to assume that the records of the immediate ancestors of Moses are at all parallel to the Mosaic records of the misty past as given in the Book of Genesis. In the absence of detailed information we might corre- spondingly write English history as follows : Plantagenets lived an hundred and thirty and one years and begat Tudors ; and Tudors lived an hundred and eighteen years and begat Stuarts, etc. In addition to this remarkable ancestry on the paternal side of Moses, we have a case of in-breeding through the marriage of Amram to his aunt, and the consequent bringing of this remarkable ancestry into the maternal side. ESTIMATE OF MOSES. Accompanying this unparalleled ancestry we have in Moses an intellect surpassing anything that the world has ever seen. We talk glibly of the impossibility of organizing the colored men and transporting them to Africa, but if such a thing is impossible now, how much more impossible would such a plan have appeared if proposed before 1860? And yet freeing the Israelites from Egyptian bondage and removing them to beyond the Red Sea was 122 GREAT MEN OF ANCIENT TIMES. not one whit less difficult than would have been the same operation applied to the American negro before the Rebellion. But given the Hebrews liberated, what other character in all history could un- aided guide and control a mob of a million and a half of heredity the great wisdom of Solomon was largely inherited from his father David, and was increased in the son by a mysterious sort of "advanta- geous variation." By an equally mysterious sort of disadvantageous variation the greatness of Solomon was not perpetuated in his son Rehoboam. According to the theory here advocated, the wisdom of Solomon was due partly to the fact that David was born with a well-organized brain, and partly to the fact that he lived many years and acquired much wisdom before Solomon was conceived. Going back another step, the theory explains David's inherited brain as due to the fact that Jesse lived long and developed his brain before David was conceived. In other words, the theory furnishes a plain, reasonable, and easily understood explanation for what has been considered mysterious and wholly inexplicable. If asked why Solomon's wisdom was not passed along to the next generation, it is only necessary to point to the fact that Rehoboam. the son and heir of Solomon, was conceived when Solomon was GREAT MEN OF ANCIENT TIMES. 123 only 1 6 years old, and consequently inherited only the immature development of his father. Consider Solomon as wise as we may, we cannot conceive him as being very wise at the age of 16. There is nothing mysterious about this, no "advantageous" or "disad- vantageous" variation, but a plain result arising from a very plain cause. CONFUCIUS. Nearly 2,500 years ago there lived in China a man by the name of Shoo-leang-heih, who was noted for his strength and courage, who had served with distinction as a soldier and who had been appointed chief magistrate of the province of Tseaou-y. When advanced in years he found hiroself a widower with nine children, all girls his only son having died in infancy. Although already an old man he decided upon marrying again in the hope of having a son to continue the family in the male line. Acting on this impulse, he addressed himself to the head of the house of Yen, requesting one of his daughters in marriage. Yen was loath to give one of his daughters in marriage to so old a man, but, as Shoo-leang-heih was too great and powerful a person to be ignored, he called his three daughters before him and stated the case. Find- ing that the two elder daughters maintained silence to even the proposition of marrying a chief magistrate, the youngest daughter spoke up and said that she would do her father's bidding. From this very old man, Shoo-leang-heih, and the youngest daughter of another old man, sprang Confucius, the greatest man in Chi- nese history and one of the greatest men who ever lived. This does not tell us how old Shoo-leang-heih was at the time of his son's birth, but the probabilities are that he was considerable over sixty and perhaps over seventy years of age. Time has to be provided for him to acquire distinction as a soldier, to be appointed 124 GREAT MEN OF ANCIENT TIMES. chief magistrate, to marry, to have ten children, to become a widower and to marry again. In a country where people move as deliberately as they do in China this must have required a good many years. LAO-TSE. Contemporary with Confucius was Lao-tse, a Chinaman in some respects greater even than Confucius. There is in Chinese litera- ture an account of an interview between these two great philos- ophers in which Confucius appears at a disadvantage. The teach- ings of Lao-tse were purely moral and they more nearly resem- bled those of Jesus than did those of any other man. Lao-tse's father was not married until seventy years of age, and the accounts state that his mother was a very old woman. BUDDHA. At a date not far from when Confucius was born, there was born in India the greatest man India ever produced. "The facts of Buddha's mortal life may be briefly told. His father had mar- ried sisters, Mahamaya . and Mahaprajapati. Mahamaya, having come to her forty-fifth year, was about to be delivered of her first child, and, in accordance with the Hindu custom, had started for her father's home. On the way she rested under a satin tree, and there gave birth to her boy. Here legend steps in with marvels." * This places Buddha in sub-class A 3 from his mother. I do not have the age of his father, but the probabilities are that he was advanced in years, otherwise he would have been apt to neg- lect a 44-year old wife for the charms of some younger female. * Sir Edwin Arnold. GREAT MEN OF ANCIENT TIMES. 125 We have confirmation of this in Arnold's Light of Asia, in which the father is spoken of as being an old man. MOHAMMED. Mohammed, born in 570, was the son of Abdaliah, born in 545, consequently Mohammed comes in class b and, with the exception of Napoleon, is the only really great man born so low in the scale. When we look further into- his ancestry we find that Abdaliah was the tenth son of Abd al Muttalib, born before 499, son of Hashim, who was the youngest son of Abd Menaf, who was the youngest son of Cossai. We also find that Hashim was advanced in years when he married Salma, who was a woman of much character and of mature years, who had been previously married and who had two sons. Although Mohammed was born in class b, his father comes in class A, and perhaps is one of the sub-classes, and all of the other known births are also of high rank. We have only to assume that his mother was also well born to have all the elements necessary to account for his greatness in spite of the comparative youth of his father. That Abdaliah was more than ordinarily developed for his years we learn from the statement that he was a merchant on his own responsibility, and that he died two months after the birth of Mohammed. GREECE AND ROME IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES. In Southern Europe, at the present day, men and women mature early, marry early, have children in early life, and are worn out at an age when they should be in robust health. While this is what happens now, such was not the case when Greece and Rome produced the men who have been the wonders of the world during the past 2,000 years. The difference between the mental ability of the modern Greek and Italian, and that of those who flourished 126 GREAT MEN OF ANCIENT TIMES. in the days of Pericles and Caesar, is not more sharply marked than is the difference between the ages of reproduction now and then. For several hundred years Sparta was governed by the laws of Lycurgus. These laws took children from their parents and reared them in a gymnasium. At the age of thirty the men were per- mitted to marry. The Spartan training related only to the phys- ical, and as a consequence they developed the physique. The mental development being neglected, the only great men produced under the Lycurgan system were great generals. History tells us that in Athens the men usually married at the age of thirty-five. In contradistinction to the practice in Sparta, the Athenian youths were educated for generations, and the result was that during the latter part of several hundred years of such education we find the majority of the men who made Greece famous. In examining the ancestry of famous Greeks I have been much hampered by the lack of data. For Socrates I can find only that he was the son of an artist and a mid-wife. In many other cases I have the names of a long line of ancestors, but no dates that will give the information I seek. I have, however, been able to find enough to give a pretty clear idea of what occurred. ALEXANDER THE GREAT. Alexander the Great is perhaps the most famous of Grecians, but that is quite a different thing from being the man of greatest mental ability. That in some respects he was mentally great there can be no doubt, but the history of his excesses, his vanity, and the circumstances under which his life ended show that he lacked that stability which characterizes true mental greatness. He was GREAT MEN OF ANCIENT TIMES. born in 356 B. C, and was the son of Philip II of Macedon, who was born 382 B. C. He therefore comes in class b. When con- trasted with his father there can be no doubt but that Philip was the greater man mentally. It was Philip who taught Alexan- der the art of war, who invented the celebrated Macedonian pha- lanx, who by skill, ability and diplomacy raised Macedonia to supremacy in Grecian affairs, and who furnished all of the material which Alexander afterwards used in his conquests. Philip had already planned, and partly organized, the Persian invasion that his son subsequently carried out, and if he had not been assassi- nated at his daughter's wedding it might have been Philip the Great instead of Alexander the Great. PHILIP OF MACEDON. Philip was the son of Amyntas II, who was the son of Alexander I, son of Amyntas I. We are not informed when Amyntas II was born, but we learn that he contested the right to the throne forty-seven years before his son was born. Whether Philip be placed in class A or one of the sub-classes A 2 or A 3 will depend upon how young Amyntas II was when he made this con- test. It will not do to make him very young, as that would remove him an unreasonable distance from his grandfather, because, when he did subsequently become king, it was 106 years after his grand- father had ascended the throne. If Amyntas II was ten years old at the time of this contest, Philip would be in sub-class A 3 , and he is placed there as a reasonable estimate. ARISTOTLE. Aristotle was born 384 B. C., and was the son of Nichomachus, friend and physician in ordinary to King Amyntas II. The "phy- sician in ordinary" to a king is not likely to be a young man, I2 8 GREAT MEN OF ANCIENT TIMES. especially in a country in which there were many wise old men, and when the king is an old man it is practically certain that his physician was not a young man. When we learn that this physi- cian was also the personal friend of the king, it is reasonable to assume that they were about the same age. As Amyntas II was in the neighborhood of sixty when Aristotle was born, the most reasonable place to locate Aristotle is in sub-class A 3 . Any other assumption would do violence to known facts. For an estimate of the greatness of Aristotle I cannot do better than to quote from Myers' Ancient History. "As Socrates was surpassed by his pupil Plato, so in turn was Plato excelled by his disciple Aristotle, 'the master of those who know/ In him the philosophical genius of the Hellenic intellect reached its culmination. It may be doubted whether all the ages since his time has produced so profound an intellect as his." Plato called him the -"Mind of the school," and when he was absent would say, "Intellect is not here to-day." ALCIBIADES. Alcibiades, the great Athenian general, was born about 450 B. C. He was son of Cleinias, who greatly distinguished himself in the naval battle at Artemisium in 480 B. C. We do not have the date of Cleinias' birth, but as the battle o>f Artemisiumi was fought thirty years before the birth of Alcibiades, and as young Athenians were never sent on foreign military service before twenty years of age, he could not have been less than fifty at the time of his son's birth. As the probabilities that a man will "be greatly distinguished" before he is twenty-five are rather remote, we can safely assume that Alcibiades belongs in sub-class A 2 . PERICLES. Pericles, the greatest Athenian statesman, was born 495 B. C., and was the son of Xantippus and Agarista. I have spent much RICHARD OWEN [50] TASSO [51] GREAT MEN OF ANCIENT TIMES. 1 29 time trying to obtain the birth-rank of Pericles, but with only partial results. I have the names oi ten o