THE PARENTS OF GREAT MEN 



Report on Data Submitted in Response to Offers of C. L. Redfield — Hypothesis 



that Talent Is Inherited only as a Result of Excess Work Done by 



Ancestors Is Not Supported by Facts 



IT IS the j^^eneral belief of men of 

 science that jjarcnts cannot transmit 

 their education to their children, by 

 the process of l^iolojjjical heredity. 

 The child is the product of the parents' 

 gerTn-|)lasm. and no way is known by 

 which the rcadinj^ and study of the 

 parents could so afl'ect their geriTi-]:)lasm 

 as to change the mental capacities of 

 their offspring. The child, it is sup- 

 posed, inherits only the inborn, germinal 

 traits of his tather and mother, and is 

 unaffected by those which his parents 

 acquired, whether they be physical, as 

 scars or sunburn, or mental, as a knowl- 

 edge of Sanskrit. 



But this general belief is not accepted 

 by C. L. Redfield, a Chicago engineer. 

 He is convinced that 



Educating the grandfather helps to make 

 the grandson a superior person. . . . We 

 are, in our inheritance, exactly what our 

 ancestors made us by the work they per- 

 formed before repro(lucing. Whether our 

 descendants are to be better or worse than 

 we are will depend upon the amount and 

 kind of work we do before we produce them. 



Mr. Redfield reached this conclusion 

 through the study of pedigrees of men 

 and various other animals, which seemed 

 to show that superior individuals were 

 always born late in the life of their 

 parents, or at least, that they re]:)re- 

 scnted several generations of slow breed- 

 ing. He reasoned that this excess time 

 must mean that the parents had done 

 excess work before rei)rodticing, and 

 that the offs])ring were superior becatise 



they ir.hcrited the eilects of this excess 

 work. 



A theory so antagonistic to the 

 accepted view of heredity naturally 

 made little headway among biologists. 

 With a \^iew to securing evidence which 

 might be more convincing, Mr. Redfield 

 asked the American (jcnetic Association 

 to publish an offer on his behalf, and 

 this offer has been open for about three 

 years. As revised and expanded a 

 year ago,* it read as follows: 



1. He will pay S200 for evidence that any 

 one of the two or three thousand intellecttially 

 great men or women of history is the product of 

 an ancestry which represents, on the average, 

 four generations to a century. 



2. He will pay S200 for evidence that any 

 one of the two or three hundred intellectually 

 very great men or women of history is the 

 product of an ancestry which represents, on 

 the average, three generations to a century. 



3. He will i)ay S200 for a case from livestock 

 breeding, where the parents made acquirements 

 below tiie standard, in respect to performance, 

 and the offspring surpassed the parents. 



4. He will pay $200 for a case where a decline 

 in jjowcrs of the offspring failed to follow 

 acquirements, in the parents, which were 

 clearly and distinctly below the standard of 

 I^erformance of the breed. 



5. He will pay S200 if it can be shown for 

 any group of animals that the amount of 

 improvement or decline in animal powers was 

 not, as nearly as can be determined by actual 

 measurements, exactly proportional to the 

 amount of acquirement by ancestors above or 

 below the normal or standard. 



This offer expired on December 31, 

 1916, and the results are presented 



herewith. 



NO COMPLETE HUMAN PEDIGREES FOUND 



A nmnber of ])edigrees of great men 

 have been submitted, which show rapid 

 breeding; but none of these is complete 



to the extent of including all ancestors 

 for three generations. Thus none of 

 them meets Mr. Redficld's requirement. 



'Journal of Heredity, vii, p. 286. Previous articles dealing with the subject are in this 

 JoiKNAL, Vol. vi, p. 1.S7, ]). 240, ]). 2.S4, \). 4S7; Vol. v, p. ,?U) 



400 



