Chapter 21 - A Look at Heredity

No evolutionist can overlook heredity, nor underestimate it. He believes that every generation comes in on the shoulders of its predecessors, and he fully appreciates the value of good predecessors The world’s pride of ancestry is not so foolish as it might appear.

The more intelligence and culture my forbears had the greater my possibilities. There are no breaks in the law of growth or evolution or heredity, though the casual observer often fancies there are.

Every human being comes into the world as an “acme of things accomplished” by his ancestors, and he is an “encloser of things to be” accomplished by himself and his descendants.

But who are my ancestors? Let me tell you that Ralph Waldo Emerson and Jesus of Nazareth are more directly my ancestors than many of those whom the world calls my great-grandfathers. There is a spiritual and mental kinship through which we inherit. There are spiritual and mental relationships to which we all owe far more of our goodness and greatness than can be traced to those of blood tie. In rare instances only do these spiritual and mental relationships exist within the line of blood relationship. The world does well to be proud of its ancestry; but it does better when it appreciates its spiritual ancestry. Think you that the poor little waif owes a larger inheritance to the woman who bore it and deserted it, than to the foster parents who nurtured it in love and wisdom?

Our blood relations are not the only relations from whom we inherit; neither when we are born do we cease to inherit. There is One Father of us all, and the oft-repeated statement that we are all brothers and sisters is no fanciful one. The “fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man” is fact; and the man who thinks he is limited by the ignorance of his blood relations is himself an ignoramus. If his blood relations are not to his liking, let him draw a new inheritance from the world’s greatest and best. They, too, are his ancestors.

And mark this: Not only does the son inherit from his fathers of blood or spirit tie, but many a father inherits from the son that which the son has gained from other sources than those of' blood relationship.

Inheritance by blood tie is not a stream, the outlet of which can rise no higher than its source. Rather, it is a sort of hydraulic ram through which life may be coaxed to almost any height of culture and refinement.

I have heard it said that culture is “the soul of knowledge -- the essence of right living” inherited from our ancestors. Where did they get it? I will tell you where; they got it by persistence in the same sort of practices which are decried -- by “wresting, by force,” the knowledge, wealth and dominion of others; by generations of “monastic seclusion,” much of it enforced by others whose turn it was to “wrest by force”; by generations of “rigid self-control”; by hours and days and years of prayer, which is simply a phase of “going into the silence”; and, yes, and even by “breathing like a filthy, crazy Yoga” -- though much of the breathing was forced by strenuous endeavors to get away from the raging hordes whose wealth or daughters they were stealing. The Spirit of Evolution which is running this universe is very cunning in devices for inducing self-culture. Full breathing, going into the silence, affirmations, etc., are not new methods of selfculture. They are as old and their practice as universal as life itself. But heretofore their practice has been in the main compulsory. Humanity had to be persecuted, starved, hunted into breathing, exercising, praying -- had to be forced to develop body, soul and wits by using them.

The present generation inherits the wisdom gained through their efforts. Not the least of its inheritance lies in its wits developed to the point of seeing that for selfdevelopment, ten minutes of voluntary deep breathing is preferable to an all-day chase to save one’s neck; that a half hour of intelligent silence is worth more than the three and four hour “wrestlings with the Lord” such as our great-grandfather John Wesley -- and many of his inheritors -- practiced regularly.

Herein lies the great difference between our ancestors and us. They were by conditions compelled to self-culture; whilst we, their inheritors, are making intelligent use of it. Through evolution we are learning to conserve energy. Our ancestors spent all their time -- perforce -- in half-unconscious physical exercise and breathings; we spend a few minutes a day in intelligent exercise and breathing, and conserve our forces for mental and spiritual uses.

And without them [our ancestors] we should be minus the intelligence to do this.

Humanity is a solidarity -- on the square; and without the work of his ancestors none shall be made perfect.

But it is by the work of his ancestors that man stands on to-day's pinnacle. What they learned to do by labored effort and mainly under compulsion, we do by instinct. It is by man's work to-day on this pinnacle, that his great-grandchildren shall be brought forth on yet higher pinnacles, with yet higher instinctive knowledge.

Take the most cultured person you know; trace his ancestry and tell me where his culture began. You cannot do it. Go clear back to William the Conqueror if you will; thus far you may call his ancestors cultured, but even so their culture, all the way back, is a descending scale of boorishness in comparison with what we twentieth century folk call culture. And we must hark back of William for the beginning of his culture. William the Conqueror was the illegitimate son of Robert the Devil. Did culture begin with Robert? And the mother of William was a miller’s daughter. Is she the mother of all culture?

Robert the Devil was the third earl of Normandy; which means that his grandfather was an ordinary everyday scrub who probably murdered somebody particularly obnoxious to the king and was rewarded with an earldom. Did he bequeath “the soul of knowledge, the essence of right living,” to William the Conqueror and his exclusive progeny? If so, where did he get it?

His own grandfather and the ancestors of the poor miller’s daughter roamed the same woods, fought the same battles, hunted the same beasts and men, and gnawed the same bones. Where did the ancestors of Robert the Devil pick up the “soul of knowledge”? And what were the miller’s ancestors doing whilst Robert's grandfathers cornered the “essence of right living”? For I warrant you that William’s miller’s-daughter-mother was less of a stranger to the “soul of knowledge, the essence of right living” than was that devil of a Robert.

Yes, there are many people who are educated but not cultured. But their progeny will brag of their culture. For what is in one generation mere education, or “monastic seclusion,” or “rigid self-control,” or “going into the silence,” or “breathing like a filthy, crazy Yoga,” is by time and unconscious cerebration transmuted into pure “culture.”

And if any of us lack culture you may depend upon it our ancestors, by blood and spirit, are numbered among those who failed to “wrest by force” the very things decried as uncultured.

All life is education; and time transmutes education into culture, “the soul of knowledge, the essence of right living.”

Not a human effort but is necessary to the development of the soul of knowledge. Not a Yoga breath, not an hour of silence, not a moment of rigid self-control, not a day of hard labor, not a sound or movement or cry of joy or sorrow or rage or despair, -- not one but has helped to free the soul of knowledge. Not one could have been dispensed with without leaving culture less cultured than it is.

The difference between education and culture is the difference between the daily drill at the piano and the finished musical expression of a Paderewski.

Education comes first and without it there can be no culture. Education is the work of TODAY; whilst culture is the soul of well used yesterdays. Why exalt the well used yesterdays to the disparagement of today's opportunities?

Inheritance is wealth left us by sanguine and spiritual relations gone before. It is capital left us, to be increased by just such “wresting by force” as some people condemn. Who is the more valuable to the human race: -- he who parades his inheritance as he received it or he who adds to it his own efforts at self-culture?

Don’t get stuck on tradition and kowtow eternally to heredity. Be an Individual and improve heredity. If your inheritance was poor make it better; if it was good make it better. The world’s culture is only just beginning; get busy helping it along. That is the important thing.

Do it now.