CHAPTER XLIII

HEREDITY, A FACT

=A critic answered.=--During a lecture in a western city the author gave his audience an opportunity to ask questions and state their objections to his views on heredity. One of his auditors declared that he did not believe in heredity. He was then asked whether he believed in the improvement of mankind.

“Certainly,” was the objector’s reply.

“How do you suggest that this improvement may be accomplished?”

“I believe in ideal environment.”

“So do I; but, I also believe in the agencies of ideal heredity and the grace of God.”

“I don’t know anything about your last agency and I do not believe in your first; but I do believe in ideal environment.”

“Do you understand farming?”

“I am a farmer.”

“Very good; suppose you have a field you wish to plant in corn. You have access to two cribs. One is filled with nubbins; the other with large, shapely, well-matured ears of corn. From which of the two cribs would you select your seed corn?”

“I would select from the one containing the better corn.”

“But, you have just stated that you do not believe in heredity.”

“Now, Professor, you are talking about corn.”

“Yes, I am telling you how to improve corn by the intelligent control of heredity. Suppose you have no stock, but you wish to begin raising stock. Your father has some scrub stock and some pedigreed stock. He is willing for you to select your breeding stock without cost. From which of the two grades would you select?”

“I would certainly select from the pedigreed class.”

“But you have informed me that you do not believe in heredity.”

“Now you are talking about hogs, cattle and horses.”

“Yes, I am trying to explain to you that in the improvement of our domestic animals we are wise enough to use the agency of heredity. Suppose you had a daughter of marriageable age and she is entertaining a marriage proposition from each of two

young men. She comes to you for your fatherly advice and counsel. You know the records of the two young men. One is rich and rotten, the son of a corrupt politician. The other young man has good parents, a clean record, all the physical, mental and moral qualities of a real man, but he is poor. Nine times out of ten you would advise your daughter to take the fellow that is rich and rotten. You have good corn sense, good hog sense, good cow sense and good horse sense; but you have mighty poor son-in-law sense.”

When my audience ceased applauding, I held a book up before them and allowed it to represent a ten-acre field to be planted in corn. I assumed that all parts of the field were to have the same quality and richness of soil, uniform rain-fall and sunshine, and the corn to receive uniform cultivation. In this event the corn in all parts of the field would have the same environment. Then I said to my audience, “If there is nothing in heredity and you plant one-half of this field in corn selected from nubbins and the other in corn selected from large, shapely, full matured ears, the side of the field planted in nubbins will produce as fine corn as the other side.”

If there is nothing in heredity, and all in environment, the offspring from the vicious cow will be as docile and as safe as the offspring from the gentle cow; the offspring from the scrub horse with a six-minute record can be trained to trot as fast as the colt whose parents had a record of a mile in less than two minutes; and the children of the degenerate class will be as healthy and well developed, as intellectual and moral as the children of the normal parents.

=Heredity in plant life.=--There is operative in every sprig of grass, weed, vegetable, shrub, and tree two agencies--heredity and environment. What they are and what they are to be are wholly determined by these two agencies. In the past fifty and seventy-five years we have doubled the size, variety and quality of our vegetables and fruits. Nature gave us the wild rose, bearing a small bloom with five petals; nature and man have produced the large, shapely, fragrant, beautiful rose of the yard and garden, bearing from fifty to one hundred petals to the bloom. Nature gave us the knotty wild strawberry; nature and man have produced the large, luscious strawberry of the market and table. If our cultivated and highly developed vegetables and fruits had been left to the careless farmer, or in their wild state, with their heredity and environment without intelligent control, a Keifer pear and an Alberta peach would not have been produced in a million years.

=Heredity in animal life.=--In the last fifty and one hundred years intelligent man, through the wise control of heredity and environment, has produced the

popular breeds of fine poultry; the Pointer and Setter dogs; the Poland China, Berkshire and Duroc hogs; the Southdown and Merino sheep; the Durham, Jersey and Holstein cattle; Percheron, Coach and Hambletonian horses. Nature gave us the long-horned, crooked-limbed, brindle-haired wild cow; nature and man have produced the Durham. Nature gave us the wild horse that could trot at best a mile in six minutes and, when well broken, was worth twelve dollars and a half; nature and man have produced the Hambletonian that makes a mile in less than two minutes and sells for twenty thousand. Nature gave us the razor-backed, long-snouted, acorn-splitting Arkansas hog; nature and man have produced the beautiful grunter of the barnyard and the performing pig of the circus. The careless breeder or unaided nature could not have produced these results in centuries of time. Man proudly claims the honor of making these improvements. He maintains great stock shows and stock journals, visits foreign countries and pays fabulous prices that he may constantly improve his stock. He secures large appropriations from government revenues with which to prevent the spread of hog cholera among his hogs and Texas fever among his cattle. So great is man’s interest in these improvements that nearly all men take one or more agricultural, bee, poultry and stock journals and their wives take poodle dog journals. Why this interest? Money and pleasure.

=Money and pleasure more valuable than manhood.=--We have seen what man has accomplished among the vegetables, fruits and domestic animals, now let us study his wisdom in the application of these agencies in the human family. When we study man in relation to the world about him, his physical, mental and moral possibilities, and from Revelation, we get a glimpse of what the human race ought to be. In both sacred and profane history we find some specimens of noble, ideal manhood. On the farm and in the shop, behind the counter and at the bar, in congress and in senate, on the platform and in the pulpit, we find some, who, by inheritance, environment, personal effort and the grace of God, have become examples of ideal manhood. But look at men in the mass. How few examples of perfect manhood do you find in a crowd of ten thousand men? Look at the enervated and stunted fathers; the nervous and sickly mothers; the puny and weakly children; the poorly developed bodies and dwarfed minds. Why should sixty-seven per cent. of our children be physically or mentally defective at birth? Why should one hundred and sixty-five children out of every thousand born in country places and two hundred and twenty in the cities, die in their first year? Ninety-five per cent. of the well-cared-for lower animals are perfect at birth and ninety per cent. grow to old age and are rarely sick. Why should crime, insanity, feeble-mindedness and epilepsy have increased three hundred per cent. during the last twenty years? Why this remarkable improvement among vegetables, fruits and domestic animals, and this appalling degeneracy among men? Love of money and pleasure explains the one; man’s fallen condition explains the other. Dollars and pleasure in one; sacrifice, manhood and womanhood in the other.

=Heredity versus environment.=--If there is nothing in heredity, and all in the environment, given the same environment, the offspring from the vicious horse will be as easily broken and be as safe as the offspring from the docile horse; the offspring from the horse that can make a mile at best in six minutes can be trained to trot as fast as the offspring whose parents could make a mile in less than two minutes.

My contention is that the same intelligence that has produced the beautiful fragrant rose, the splendid vegetables, the luscious fruits and our present improved varieties of domestic animals, can produce similar improvements in the human family.

=Heredity applied by the early Romans.=--In the early history of Rome, custom and law made it a special honor to be a Roman mother. She was surrounded by examples of courage, bravery, strength, power, heroism and purity. Special homage was shown her on the streets, at the arena, and when viewing the marching victorious armies. Such treatment and such environment made it possible for the Roman mother to become a real help in making Rome the mistress of the world. Had this courtesy, gallantry, manly attention, respect and reverence for girlhood, womanhood, wifehood and motherhood continued, Rome might never have fallen. Have we the gallantry, courtesy, respect and reverence for womanhood as in former days? A quarter of a century ago it was indeed a rare thing that a man would be so thoughtless as to smoke or swear in the presence of a woman; now it is a very common occurrence.

=Plato’s views.=--Plato, a heathen philosopher, born more than two thousand years ago, who never heard of the Bible or the Savior, made a careful study of the laws of heredity, and for the improvement of men suggested laws that would do honor to our day. In his Republic he suggested that parentageable married people be prohibited from the use of wine. Wine included all alcoholic drinks. He also suggested that the inferior classes should be restricted in marriage and that marriage should be encouraged among the superior classes. Under the teaching of Plato, Lycurgus, in his reign, assuming that children were more the property of the nation than of their own parents, sought to have all children well born. In two hundred years that small nation is said to have produced twenty-eight of the master minds of the world.

=Genius is hereditary.=--Aristotle’s father was a scholar and a philosopher. Beecher’s father was a scholarly preacher. William Pitt’s father at the age of twenty-seven was at the head of the English government. Lord Bacon’s father was a great scholar and statesman. Darwin was the product of several generations containing a number of geniuses.

The Bach family of musicians in Germany is a fine example of musical heredity. Among them were nineteen musicians of eminence. Fifty-seven of their names are found in the Dictionary of Music. At family reunions there were counted as many as two hundred and fifty church organists and choir leaders. The genius for music appears to be as easily transmitted as that for art or militarism. There appears to be only a very few exceptions among the great musical geniuses.

Cæsar, Alexander, Wellington and Hannibal seem to have inherited a genius for war. Napoleon Bonaparte’s Corsican mother, before his birth, accompanied her husband to the field of war, exposing herself to deprivation and danger, and being elated and thrilled by every victory. When a child, he showed the military spirit. As a man of eighteen and twenty he was a failure and attempted suicide. When twenty-three he was given a chance to quell a raging mob in Paris, and crushed it in his first effort. From that time until England chained him he conquered everything before him.

From the days of the Crusades to the war with Spain we find the Lees were military leaders. Cromwell and Grant appear to be exceptions to the rule.

=Max Jukes.=--Vice, as well as virtue, runs in families. Max Jukes was born in 1703. Both he and his wife were born of inferior parents. He was a drinking man and seemed to delight in breaking law. His wife was a common prostitute. We have identified and studied eleven hundred and three of his descendants. One hundred and twenty-six were thieves and murderers and spent several years in the penal institutions, ninety female prostitutes, one hundred and forty-five drunkards; two hundred and eighty-five were viciously diseased and four hundred had either consumption, epilepsy, or were feeble-minded. Eleven hundred and three were delinquents--not one a good citizen. They cost New York a million and a quarter dollars.

=Jonathan Edwards.=--Jonathan Edwards was born in 1720. He and his wife had splendid heredity. They were well educated. They were converted to Christ in childhood. We have identified and studied thirteen hundred and ninety-four of their descendants. We find thirteen university presidents; one hundred and twenty-three college and university professors; thirty-two eminent authors; ninety-six physicians; over two hundred ministers; four hundred successful business men; one vice president; mayors of large cities, U. S. senators and congressmen; ministers to foreign ports; only one left a stain on the family record--Aaron Burr who fought a duel with Alexander Hamilton.

=The potency of heredity.=--Suppose that the environments of these two families could have been reversed and their heredity left the same, could you then have written the figures after Max Jukes that we have written after Edwards, or vice versa? No real student of sociological conditions believes that we could. Environment certainly had much to do with both of these families; but all students of heredity believe that in these families heredity was as great as, or even a greater factor than, environment. The dependent and delinquent descendants of Max Jukes were the products of bad heredity, bad environment and the rejection of Christ; the great and good descendants of Edwards were the products of good heredity, good environment and the grace of God.

=Bible and heredity.=--In the Old and New Testament, the writers of nearly every book appear to recognize the potency of heredity. We can refer to only a few of them here as proof of the fact of heredity. God told Sampson’s mother that she must drink no strong wine and eat no impure food.

David gives a most excellent statement of the results of good heredity: “But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him and his righteousness unto children’s children.” The word fear, as applied in this case, means perfect obedience prompted by respect, reverence and love for one in authority.

The Jews, who could trace their lineal descent to Abraham, often boasted of their inherited superiority over other Jews and people of other nations.

Paul, writing to Timothy, said, “When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice,” etc. In this statement Paul accounts, in part at least, for the strong faith and beautiful Christian character of Timothy, on the basis of heredity.

David explains the sins of his life as being due, in part at least, to a bad heredity. “I was shapen in sin and in iniquity did my mother conceive me.”

=Iniquities of fathers visited upon their children.=--In Exodus 20:5, we find a most remarkable statement of the hereditary results of obedience to law and of disobedience. “I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous

God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generations of them that hate me, and showing mercy to thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.” This is a much misunderstood passage. God does not arbitrarily choose to force a punishment upon an innocent child whose father ignorantly or viciously violated law any more than he breaks the leg or neck of a man who accidentally or with suicidal intent falls from the top of a building. God has wisely placed all men under a variety of laws. The laws are all planned for man’s good. If we keep all law, we develop manhood and womanhood. By the agency of heredity we transmit to our children the possibility of manhood and womanhood superior to that which we inherited. If we constantly violate law, we acquire physical, mental and moral degeneracy and transmit to our posterity defective conditions. In this way God has planned for each succeeding generation to become superior to the preceding one.

The statement is made that the iniquities of fathers are visited upon their children unto the third and fourth generations, and that “righteousness” is shown unto “thousands of them” (generations).

Why did God limit his first statement to the third and fourth generation? Because there is no fifth generation of continuous and unbroken iniquity. Here are two modern proofs of the truthfulness of this ancient text.

=A modern proof.=--Two thousand erring girls were interrogated with reference to the sobriety of their parents. Seventy per cent. had either drunken fathers or drunken mothers, or both. In one state penitentiary the author found seventy-two per cent. of the inmates had either drunken fathers or drunken mothers, or both. Recent investigations in one of the state reformatories for women show eighty-five per cent, had either drunken fathers or mothers, or both. Twenty-two per cent. of the feeble-minded, the insane and the epileptic had the initials of their lives to take place during a drunken debauch.

Here is a husband and wife; both are habitually under the influence of alcohol. Suppose their children follow their example and marry companions addicted to strong drink, and the children of the next generation follow the example of their parents and marry companions addicted to strong drink, and this is continued, what will be the result? There will be no fifth generation. In the first generation might have been found a daughter in the house of shame, a son in the chain gang of crime, a feeble-minded child, an epileptic, or one or more alcoholics. As a result of four generations of consecutive drunkenness, degeneracy would become so great as to result in complete sterility.

=Another proof.=--In every institution for the feeble-minded are to be found inmates who have the “Hotchinson notched teeth,” “crowfoot tracts” in the palate and throat, certain marks on the body--scientific proofs that such are congenital syphilitics. Some ancestor, two or three generations gone by, lived an immoral life, became infected with a vicious disease and transmitted the degenerative influences down the line to where it ended in complete degeneracy.

=Who is responsible?=--Is this a punishment from God upon innocent, helpless children? No. God is in no sense responsible for it. Is nature? No. Who is responsible? Men who sow their wild oats and boast of their “personal liberty” to do as they please. Have God and nature any part in this? Yes. God and nature in infinite interest, mercy and love for the unborn millions who would be blighted with inconceivable degeneracy and suffering, should they be born of such degenerate parents, say, “We have given these descendants four generations in which to prevent further degeneracy by marrying into pure and sober families, by reformation or by redemption,” and since they have not availed themselves of these restorative and redemptive means, reproduction must cease.

=Morbid heredity and bad environment.=--Bad environment and bad heredity explain the presence of every convict in our penal institutions and every inmate in the asylums. Laws and political administration that tolerate, regulate and encourage strong drink and social immorality, the two chief causes of degeneracy, and the parents who indulged in these iniquities, are largely responsible for these thousands of defective and delinquent beings who are crowding our asylums and penal institutions to a dangerous and unsanitary overflowing.

Father, son and grand-son, uncles and cousins galore crowd these institutions. Much of their mail is from relatives and bears the postmark of a similar institution, showing that crime and insanity run in families.

=Man’s development originally under two agencies.=--It is evident that God originally placed man’s development under the intelligent control of heredity and environment. If man had as wisely applied these agencies to his own improvement as he now does to the improvement of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, he would have developed to the highest possible physical, mental and moral attainments.

=His fall.=--Man’s present condition of hereditary and acquired degeneracy clearly reveals that somewhere in human history he has thrown himself out of harmony with physical, mental and moral laws governing his well-being. The record of man’s fall as given in Genesis is at least the figure of a great fact in human history. Man’s fall involved the violation of some law or laws vitally related to his physical, mental and moral natures.

=Need of a third agency.=--The results of his fall were transmissible. In his fallen state he was not able to use heredity and environment to their normal capacity. His fall resulted in abnormal heredity and environment. Without an additional agency fallen man was incapable of recovery. Hence his need of redemption and the Redeemer. Now man has at his command his intelligence, his will and the grace of God, by which he may improve himself, improve his environment, and as a result of his improved physical, mental and moral condition, he may transmit to his posterity the possibilities of manhood and womanhood superior to what he himself inherited. Just to the extent that man has received a good or a bad heredity, keeps or violates law, accepts or rejects the grace of God, just to that extent does he recover or degenerate, create a good or a bad environment, and will transmit a good or a bad heredity to his posterity.

=Greatest blessing of parents.=--What is the greatest blessing of parentage? “Riches,” is the answer. Lots of fools think that. The greatest blessing of parents to their children is a good heredity. What a child is at birth he has received largely from his parents. What he receives at birth largely determines his future.

=Greatest blessing of society.=--What is the greatest blessing of society to a child? It is a good environment. Parents can form only a part of their child’s environment. Society as a whole furnishes the environment of a child. No individual, no class of men, no lawmaker, no municipality, county, state or nation has the shadow of a moral right to place by vote or official act, or permit by passive toleration a lascivious picture, a vile book, a questionable resort, a place of vice, a saloon or a gambling den that may lead a boy or girl to ruin. Whoever assumes that right is an enemy to the social and moral well-being of society. God’s greatest gift to men is salvation through His Son. Bad heredity and environment are the only difficulties in the way of all men’s accepting Christ. The complete effects of any one or two of these agencies are impossible without the normal application of the other. No one can wholly take the place of the other two, and no two can wholly take the place of the other one. These three agencies should be ever active in every life.

=Three agencies necessary.=--You might as well try to make a triangle out of two sides as to try to produce physical, mental and moral perfection in man by the use of environment and the grace of God, when the individual has inherited little or no physical, mental and moral basis for development. If a child has received ideal heredity, but is left without educational opportunities and compelled to grow up in an immoral atmosphere, never entering a Sunday school or church, it would be impossible for him to develop scholarship or Christian character. If one has good heredity and good environment and leaves the grace of God out of his life, he is not what a man should be and will fall short of the true object of life.

=Is there a remedy?=--If man’s present degeneracy had its origin in the violation of law; if the evil physical, mental and moral effects have, in some measure, been transmitted from one generation to succeeding ones, until all men are more or less hereditarily degenerate; is there a remedy, or are we the subjects of fate? Must each succeeding generation continue to inherit a possible increase of degeneracy as we have done in the past?

=Relation of the three agencies.=--Nature and man create environment. The tendency of nature is to furnish only good environment for man. Man has it in his power to help or to hinder nature. The more depraved man is the more he hinders nature and produces for himself and others a bad environment. If hereditary degeneracy could be eliminated from the race, there would be no immoral environment. Bad environment is produced by degenerate men. Degeneracy is both inherited and acquired. Inherited degeneracy indulged, and acquired degeneracy are both transmissible. If it were possible, under present conditions, for one never to violate a law as a result of God’s grace and his own volition he could not directly and personally transmit tendencies towards evil, and he would transmit his inherited tendencies towards evil in a less degree than he inherited them. Even with ideal heredity, environment and the grace of God, one or more generations could not entirely overcome the bad effects of all preceding generations.

=The need of Christ.=--Each individual is the sum total of all the influences, good and bad, of all preceding lineal generations. The inherited good and bad antagonize each other and are modified by environment and the grace of God. If the good predominates, the bent of that individual will be toward the good, and vice versa. His approach to perfection will be determined by his heredity, his environment and by his relation to Christ. Since all men always will be the sum total of all the influences of the past, they will always need the Christ. There will always be enough temptations in the world to develop the heroic in man.

=The race can be improved.=--But it is reasonable that through the ideal application of these three agencies one generation can to a very marked degree overcome the evil effects of the past and transmit less degeneracy than it received. If each individual would embrace the grace of God, create for himself and others an ideal environment, this process continued would ultimately give us a race free from the present serious condition of physical, mental and moral degeneracy. If this conclusion is not practical, logical and correct, then science and revelation fail to give us a remedy for present race degeneracy. If this is the correct solution of our physical, mental, social and moral problems, all education, legislation, religious and personal efforts to bring about race regeneration will continue to fail until the three-fold scientific and scriptural gospel of good heredity, =good environment and the grace of God for every child=, finds its proper place in all our personal efforts, teaching, administration, legislation, and preaching.