THE SCIENCE OF HAPPINESS 



generation before that; then 64, 128, 256. We have 

 reached back only to the time of the Pilgrim fathers. 



And still they accumulate, these unavoidable an- 

 cestors. In the tenth generation they number a thou- 

 sand, omitting an unimportant dozen or two for the 

 sake of round numbers; in the twentieth generation 

 they are an army of a million. And this is going back 

 only to the twelfth or thirteenth century. One need go 

 but little further and the seemingly unassailable mathe- 

 maticals will name him an ancestry co-extensive with 

 the entire population of the globe. 



Thus are we all proven brothers in fact as well as 

 name. Thus is the antiquarian justified who had 

 traced his ancestry down to the beginning of the seven- 

 teenth century, but there lost it ; in truth he can scarcely 

 have gone amiss up to that time. Seventeenth, eigh- 

 teenth and nineteenth century genealogies are for 

 parvenus. 



But behind the jest lie sober realities of the most far- 

 reaching import. Admitting that when examined 

 critically our computation is somewhat shorn of its 

 astounding proportions by marriages of consanguinity, 

 the fact remains, beyond all levity, that every human 

 being, high or low, has had within recent times a mul- 

 titude of ancestors in direct line of descent. Marriages 

 of consanguinity being, perhaps, most frequent in 

 circles of royalty, probably the persons who have the 

 fewest ancestors, and of whom, therefore, as we shall 

 see presently, we should expect the least, are kings and 

 their kith. 



And yet the aristocrat is wont to look down upon the 



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