122 GREAT MEN OF ANCIENT TIMES. 



not one whit less difficult than would have been the same operation 

 applied to the American negro before the Rebellion. But given the 

 Hebrews liberated, what other character in all history could un- 

 aided guide and control a mob of a million and a half of liberated 

 slaves? But apart from these achievements, the Mosaic laws are 

 the finest adaptation of morality to existing circumstances ever 

 known, and the decalogue is unequalled by anything ever written 

 by the hand of man. 



SOLOMON. 



Solomon was born when his father David was 53 years old, 

 and David was the youngest of eleven sons of Jesse. If Jesse had 

 any daughters at all, David must have come in the sub-class A 3 . 

 According to the generally accepted theories of heredity the great 

 wisdom of Solomon was largely inherited from his father David, 

 and was increased in the son by a mysterious sort of "advanta- 

 geous variation." By an equally mysterious sort of disadvantageous 

 variation the greatness of Solomon was not perpetuated in his son 

 Rehoboam. According to the theory here advocated, the wisdom 

 of Solomon was due partly to the fact that David was born with 

 a well-organized brain, and partly to the fact that he lived many 

 years and acquired much wisdom before Solomon was conceived. 

 Going back another step, the theory explains David's inherited 

 brain as due to the fact that Jesse lived long and developed his 

 brain before David was conceived. In other words, the theory 

 furnishes a plain, reasonable, and easily understood explanation 

 for what has been considered mysterious and wholly inexplicable. 

 If asked why Solomon's wisdom was not passed along to the next 

 generation, it is only necessary to point to the fact that Rehoboam. 

 the son and heir of Solomon, was conceived when Solomon was 



