44 Some Eminent Men 



of grandparents. If Napoleon was born a short 

 time after the births of his grandparents, then 

 some of his numerous biographers should have 

 found and given us the facts about those grand- 

 parents. The fact that no biographer has told us 

 about those grandparents indicates that they were 

 so far in the past that, when the biographers got 

 busy, there were no living persons who knew 

 those grandparents and could tell about them. 

 The difficulty in finding records increases with 

 their distance in the past, and one reason why we 

 know so little about the ancestors of eminent men 

 is due to the fact that they are the final product of 

 old parentage repeated two or three or more gen- 

 erations in succession. 



Biographers can rarely tell us about the grand- 

 parents of eminent men. Compare that fact with 

 the fact that investigators have no great difficulty 

 in tracing the Jukes, the Ishmaels, the Kallikaks, 

 and other inferior families for three, four, five 

 or six generations. The difference is due to the 

 fact that in one case the generations are far apart 

 and in the other case they are near together. 



