Money and pleasure more valuable than manhood.—We have seen what man has accomplished among the vegetables, fruits and domestic animals, now let us study his wisdom in the application of these agencies in the human family. When we study man in relation to the world about him, his physical, mental and moral possibilities, and from Revelation, we get a glimpse of what the human race ought to be. In both sacred and profane history we find some specimens of noble, ideal manhood. On the farm and in the shop, behind the counter and at the bar, in congress and in senate, on the platform and in the pulpit, we find some, who, by inheritance, environment, personal effort and the grace of God, have become examples of ideal manhood. But look at men in the mass. How few examples of perfect manhood do you find in a crowd of ten thousand men? Look at the enervated and stunted fathers; the nervous and sickly mothers; the puny and weakly children; the poorly developed bodies and dwarfed minds. Why should sixty-seven per cent. of our children be physically or mentally defective at birth? Why should one hundred and sixty-five children out of every thousand born in country places and two hundred and twenty in the cities, die in their first year? Ninety-five per cent. of the well-cared-for lower animals are perfect at birth and ninety per cent. grow to old age and are rarely sick. Why should crime, insanity, feeble-mindedness and epilepsy have increased three hundred per cent. during the last twenty years? Why this remarkable improvement among vegetables, fruits and domestic animals, and this appalling degeneracy among men? Love of money and pleasure explains the one; man’s fallen condition explains the other. Dollars and pleasure in one; sacrifice, manhood and womanhood in the other.
Heredity versus environment.—If there is nothing in heredity, and all in the environment, given the same environment, the offspring from the vicious horse will be as easily broken and be as safe as the offspring from the docile horse; the offspring from the horse that can make a mile at best in six minutes can be trained to trot as fast as the offspring whose parents could make a mile in less than two minutes.
My contention is that the same intelligence that has produced the beautiful fragrant rose, the splendid vegetables, the luscious fruits and our present improved varieties of domestic animals, can produce similar improvements in the human family.
Heredity applied by the early Romans.—In the early history of Rome, custom and law made it a special honor to be a Roman mother. She was surrounded by examples of courage, bravery, strength, power, heroism and purity. Special homage was shown her on the streets, at the arena, and when viewing the marching victorious armies. Such treatment and such environment made it possible for the Roman mother to become a real help in making Rome the mistress of the world. Had this courtesy, gallantry, manly attention, respect and reverence for girlhood, womanhood, wifehood and motherhood continued, Rome might never have fallen. Have we the gallantry, courtesy, respect and reverence for womanhood as in former days? A quarter of a century ago it was indeed a rare thing that a man would be so thoughtless as to smoke or swear in the presence of a woman; now it is a very common occurrence.
Plato’s views.—Plato, a heathen philosopher, born more than two thousand years ago, who never heard of the Bible or the Savior, made a careful study of the laws of heredity, and for the improvement of men suggested laws that would do honor to our day. In his Republic he suggested that parentageable married people be prohibited from the use of wine. Wine included all alcoholic drinks. He also suggested that the inferior classes should be restricted in marriage and that marriage should be encouraged among the superior classes. Under the teaching of Plato, Lycurgus, in his reign, assuming that children were more the property of the nation than of their own parents, sought to have all children well born. In two hundred years that small nation is said to have produced twenty-eight of the master minds of the world.
Genius is hereditary.—Aristotle’s father was a scholar and a philosopher. Beecher’s father was a scholarly preacher. William Pitt’s father at the age of twenty-seven was at the head of the English government. Lord Bacon’s father was a great scholar and statesman. Darwin was the product of several generations containing a number of geniuses.
The Bach family of musicians in Germany is a fine example of musical heredity. Among them were nineteen musicians of eminence. Fifty-seven of their names are found in the Dictionary of Music. At family reunions there were counted as many as two hundred and fifty church organists and choir leaders. The genius for music appears to be as easily transmitted as that for art or militarism. There appears to be only a very few exceptions among the great musical geniuses.
Cæsar, Alexander, Wellington and Hannibal seem to have inherited a genius for war. Napoleon Bonaparte’s Corsican mother, before his birth, accompanied her husband to the field of war, exposing herself to deprivation and danger, and being elated and thrilled by every victory. When a child, he showed the military spirit. As a man of eighteen and twenty he was a failure and attempted suicide. When twenty-three he was given a chance to quell a raging mob in Paris, and crushed it in his first effort. From that time until England chained him he conquered everything before him.
From the days of the Crusades to the war with Spain we find the Lees were military leaders. Cromwell and Grant appear to be exceptions to the rule.
Max Jukes.—Vice, as well as virtue, runs in families. Max Jukes was born in 1703. Both he and his wife were born of inferior parents. He was a drinking man and seemed to delight in breaking law. His wife was a common prostitute. We have identified and studied eleven hundred and three of his descendants. One hundred and twenty-six were thieves and murderers and spent several years in the penal institutions, ninety female prostitutes, one hundred and forty-five drunkards; two hundred and eighty-five were viciously diseased and four hundred had either consumption, epilepsy, or were feeble-minded. Eleven hundred and three were delinquents—not one a good citizen. They cost New York a million and a quarter dollars.