The Editor: Genealogy and Eugenics 



375 



complicated ever to become popular, 

 I suspect. 



THE IDEAL GENEALOGY 



Genealogical data of the kind we 

 need, however, can not be reduced to a 

 mere table or family tree. The ideal 

 genealogy, as described by Davenport,^ 

 starts with a whole fraternity — the 

 individual who is making it, and all 

 his brothers or sisters. It describes 

 fully each member of this fraternity. 

 "It then describes each member of the 

 fraternity to which the father belongs 

 and gives some account of their consorts 

 (if married) and their children. It does 

 the same for the maternal fraternity. 

 Next it considers the fraternity to 

 which the father's father belongs, con- 

 siders their consorts, their children and 

 grandchildren, and it does the same for 

 the fraternities to which the father's 

 mother belongs. If possible, earlier 

 generations are to be similarly treated. 

 It were more significant thus to study 

 in detail the behavior of all the available 

 product of the germ-plasms involved 

 in the makeup of the first fraternity 

 than to weld a chain or two of links 

 through six or seven generations. A 

 genealogy constructed on such a plan 

 would give a clear picture of heredity, 

 would be useful for the prediction of the 

 characteristics of the generations yet 

 unborn, and would, indeed, aid in 

 bringing about better matings." 



(5) With these changes, genealogy 

 would become the study of heredity, 

 rather than the study of lineage. Per- 

 haps you will not all agree that this 

 would be a desirable change; but I 

 think if you can once get the biological, 

 the eugenic point of view, you will 

 realize that any other field for genealogy 

 is too narrow. 



I do not mean to say that the study 

 of heredity is nothing more than applied 

 genealogy. As we understand it now- 

 adays, it includes mathematical and 

 biological territory which must always 

 be foreign to genealogy. I should prefer 

 to put it this way: That in so far as 

 Man in concerned, heredity is the 

 interpretation of genealogy, and eugen- 



' Davenport, C. B. 

 1911. 



ics the application of heredity. But I 

 do mean to say that genealogy 

 should give its students a vision of the 

 species as a great group of ever-changing, 

 inter-related organisms, a great network 

 originating in the obscurity of the past, 

 stretching forward into the obscurity 

 of the future, every individual in it 

 organically related to every other, and 

 all of them the heritors of the past in a 

 very real sense. 



No one is so well fitted as the geneal- 

 ogist to realize the solemn grandeur of 

 Weissmann's doctrine that the germ- 

 plasm is continuous from the beginning 

 of existence on this world to the now 

 unseen end. Our bodies, as you all have 

 heard, are made up of two parts: this 

 mass of highly differentiated cells which 

 represent the man or woman, and which 

 are destined to die when the individual 

 shall have completed his three score 

 years and ten, more or less; and 

 within, the little mass of germ -cells, the 

 undifferentiated, immortal or at least 

 potentially immortal carriers of the 

 heritage of the race. Generation after 

 generation this germ-plasm goes on 

 dividing ; from parent to child it is passed 

 on, unchanged save by the addition at 

 each generation of a new line from the 

 second parent. The body dies, but if 

 the individual has left posterity, the 

 germ-plasm lives after him. Immor- 

 tality is, in this sense at least, a very 

 real thing to the biologist ; and I believe 

 the genealogist would see a new meaning 

 in his work if he kept the same concep- 

 tion in mind. 



IMPORTANCE OF INDIVIDUALS 



Genealogy does well in giving a 

 realization of the importance of the 

 family, but it errs if it bases this teaching 

 altogether on the family pride in some 

 remote ancestor who, even though he 

 bore the family name and was a prodigy 

 of virtues, probably counts for very 

 little in the individual's makeup 

 today. Let me take a concrete though 

 wholly imaginary illustration : what man 

 would not feel a certain satisfaction in 

 being a lineal descendant of George 

 Washington? And yet, if we place the 



Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, p. 240. New York, Henry Holt & Co., 



