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.
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