Maurice Fishberg contends[160] that many Jewish families are characterized by extremes,—that in each generation they have produced more ability and also more disability than would ordinarily be expected. This seems to be true of some of the more prominent old American families as well. On the other hand, large families can be found, such as the remarkable family of New England office-holders described by Merton T. Goodrich,[161] in which there is a steady production of civic worth in every generation with almost no mental defectives or gross physical defectives. In such a family there is a high sustained level. It is such strains which eugenists wish especially to increase.
In this connection it is again worth noting that a really great man is rarely found in an ancestry devoid of ability. This was pointed out in the first chapter, but is certain to strike the genealogist's attention forcibly. Abraham Lincoln is often quoted as an exception; but more recent studies of his ancestry have shown that he is not really an exception; that, as Ida M. Tarbell[162] says, "So far from his later career being unaccounted for in his origin and early history, it is as fully accounted for as is the case of any man." The Lincoln family was one of the best in America, and while Abraham's own father was an eccentric person, he was yet a man of considerable force of character, by no means the "poor white trash" which he is often represented to have been. The Hanks family, to which the Emancipator's mother belonged, had also maintained a high level of ability in every generation; furthermore, Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, the parents of Abraham Lincoln, were first cousins.
The more difficult cases, for the eugenist, are rather to be found in such ancestries as those of Louis Pasteur and Michael Faraday. Pasteur[163] might perhaps be justly considered the greatest man France has ever produced; his father was a non-commissioned soldier who came of a long line of tanners, while his mother's family had been gardeners for generations. Faraday, who is worthy to be placed close to Charles Darwin among eminent Englishmen, was the son of a blacksmith and a farmer's daughter. Such pedigrees are striking; and yet, as Frederick Adams Woods has remarked, they ought to strengthen rather than to weaken one's belief in the force of heredity. When it is considered how rarely such an ancestry produces a great man, it must be fairly evident that his greatness is due to an accidental conjunction of favorable traits, as the modern theory of genetics holds; and that greatness is not due to the inheritance of acquired characters, on which hypothesis Pasteur and Faraday would indeed be difficult to explain.
Cases of this sort, even though involving much less famous people, will be found in almost every genealogy, and add greatly to the interest of its study, as well as offering valuable data to the professional geneticist.
(d) Even if the information it furnishes were more complete, human genealogy would not justify the claims sometimes made for it as a science, because, to use a biological phrase, "the matings are not controlled." The results of a certain experiment are exhibited, but can not be interpreted unless one knows what the results would have been, had the preceding conditions been varied in this way or in that way. These controlled experiments can be made in plant and animal breeding; they have been made by the thousand, by the hundred thousand, for many years. They can not be made in human society. It is, of course, not desirable that they should be made; but the consequence is that the biological meaning of human history, the real import of genealogy, can not be known unless it is interpreted in the light of modern plant and animal breeding. It is absolutely necessary that genealogy go into partnership with genetics, the general science of heredity. If a spirit of false pride leads genealogists to hold aloof from these experiments, they will make slow progress. The interpretation of genealogy in the light of modern research in heredity through the experimental breeding of plants and animals is full of hope; without such light, it will be discouragingly slow work.
Genealogists are usually proud of their pedigrees; they usually have a right to be. But their pride should not lead them to scorn the pedigrees of some of the peas, and corn, snapdragons and sugar beets, bulldogs and Shorthorn cattle, with which geneticists have been working during the last generation; for these humble pedigrees may throw more light on their own than a century of research in purely human material.
The science of genealogy will not have full meaning and full value to those who pursue it, unless they bring themselves to look on men and women as organisms subject to the same laws of heredity and variation as other living things. Biologists were not long ago told that it was essential for them to learn to think like genealogists. For the purpose of eugenics, neither science is complete without the other; and we believe that it is not invidious to say that biologists have been quicker to realize this than have genealogists. The Golden Age of genealogy is yet to come.
(4) In addition to the correction of these faulty methods, there are certain extensions of genealogical method which could advantageously be made without great difficulty.
(a) More written records should be kept, and less dependence placed on oral communication. The obsolescent family Bible, with its chronicle of births, deaths and marriages, is an institution of too great value in more ways than one, to be given up. The United States have not the advantage of much of the machinery of State registration which aids European genealogy, and while working for better registration of vital statistics, it should be a matter of pride with every family to keep its own archives.
(b) Family trees should be kept in more detail, including all brothers and sisters in every family, no matter at what age they died, and including as many collaterals as possible. This means more work for the genealogist, but the results will be of much value to science.