THE DAYS OF A MAN 



CHAPTER ONE 



''If we know ourselves well," says Barrie, *'we 

 know our parents also." Conversely runs the old 

 Shinto maxim, "Let men know by your own deeds 

 who were your ancestors." Again, according to 

 Erasmus Darwin more than a century ago, each 

 man is but "an elongation of his parents' life." He 

 is, in fact, the elongation of two lives — and (be- 

 hind these) of thousands of others more or less 

 divergent, else he could have no individuality or 

 be really himself. Such originality as may be his 

 comes from new combination, not from acquisition. 



When a child is once born, "the gate of gifts is 

 closed"; nothing more comes unsought. He may 

 henceforth expect nothing new, but must devote 

 himself to the adjustment and development of his 

 heritage of potentialities received through father 

 and mother. Each one, then, is a "chip of the old 

 block," but not that alone; each is a composite of 

 many chips of many blocks — a fact which obligates 

 me to say something about my ancestry. This was puritan 

 made up of common men — farmers, teachers, aruestry 

 preachers, lawyers — and their womenfolk, all of 

 the old Puritan stock, every one of their earlier 

 forebears (so far as we know) having migrated hope- 

 fully from Devon for the most part, or in some cases 

 from London, to build up new fortunes in the free 



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