The Parents of Great Men 



403 



eldest great-grandson, 95 >^ years. 

 Knowing the age of the father when his 

 eldest son was born, one can reach an 

 estimate of the father's age at marriage 

 by deducting two years from the age 

 first given. This puts the average 

 age of marriage of men in Mannheim 

 at 313^^ years: the actual figures 

 would be under rather than over this. 

 Adding six years in accordance with 

 custom, it appears that the length of a 

 generation in the male line in Mann- 

 heim cannot be much less than thirty- 

 seven years. 



HERBERT SPENCER 



Herbert Spencer was born in 1820, 

 when his father was 30 and his mother 

 26. His father's ancestry shows a 

 record of rapid reproduction, five genera- 

 tions of the tail-male averaging Only 

 29 years each. In the mother's an- 

 cestry, according to Mr. Redfield, there 

 is indication of slow breeding. 



The average generation in England 

 appears to be at least a year shorter 

 than in Prussia. 



JOHN STUART MILL 



Few of John Stuart Mill's ancestors 

 are known, but his case is worth quot- 

 ing, because it is great thinkers like 

 Mill and Spencer who, one would 

 suppose, ought to show the most clear- 

 cut evidence for Mr. Redfield 's hypo- 

 thesis, if it were well-founded. Mill 

 was born in 1806 when his father was 33 

 and mother 24. His father was an 

 eldest son, and his paternal grand- 

 mother was the daughter of an 18-year- 

 old girl. 



WILLIAM "the conqueror" 



The pedigree of the Norman dukes 

 is incomplete, but it is known that 

 Richard I, "Sans Peur, " was born in 

 933, and that William was born in 1027. 

 This gives 94 years for three genera- 

 tions in the tail-male, a length of time 

 which is below the average for even 

 persons of mediocre intellect. 



LOUIS PASTEUR 



The length of an average generation 



in France has been frequently investi- 

 gated. In Paris of the eighteenth 

 century Fourier and Villot, working in- 

 dependently, found it to be about 33 

 years for men and 28 for women. 

 Wacher (1882) reached figures two 

 years higher than these. Turquan^ 

 made a very careful study in 1892, 

 which fixed the generation at that time 

 as 34.8 years in the male Hne and 29.8 

 in the female, giving an average genera- 

 tion of 32.3 years. 



If a body of thoughtful persons were 

 asked to name the greatest man France 

 has ever produced, Louis Pasteur would 

 probably get more votes than any 

 other. If it were a body of very thought- 

 ful persons, the vote would probably 

 be unanimous. Pasteur's ancestry ^^ is 

 therefore well worth study. 



Born in 1822, he came of a humble 

 stock, his father's family having followed 

 the trade of tanner for some genera- 

 tions, and his mother's that of gardener. 

 His father was a noncommissioned 

 officer in Napoleon's army, a man of 

 much force of character but hardly 

 giving promise of being the father of 

 one of the world's greatest scientists. 

 The father was 31 and the mother 

 probably under 30, when Louis was 

 born. For his paternal grandfather 

 the figure is 22 and for the latter's wife, 

 something less than 20, since she died 

 at that age. The ages of the paternal 

 grandfather's parents were apparently 

 36 and 30. 



Incomplete as it is, it would be hard 

 to find a pedigree offering more objec- 

 tions to Mr. Redfield's hypothesis than 

 does that of Pasteur. 



MICHAEL FARADAY 



Faraday (born 1791) is one of the 

 few men of science w^orthy to be ranked 

 with Pasteur. His ancestry is equally 

 remarkable in showing no trace of 

 scholarship prior to the appearance of 

 the one prodigy. His father was a 

 blacksmith, his mother an uneducated 

 farmer's daughter. The age of the 

 former was 30, and of the latter 27 



" Turquan, V. De la duree de la generation en France. Jour, de la Soc. de Stal. de Paris 37 

 (1896). The other French studies are quoted from Turquan. 



" The Life of Pasteur, by liis son-in-law, Rene Vallery Radot, should be read by every 

 student of biology. 



