Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/390

378 It is a delusion to suppose that one man living seven or eight hundred years ago was one's ancestor to the exclusion of all the rest of the people living at that time in the country, and still having descendants in it. We have sprung from the whole mass; they were all our direct ancestors; we are vitally related to them all, directly descended from them all. Heraldry follows only one line of succession, the line of the eldest surviving son, the line that carries name and title and landed property. It is commonly imagined that one standing in this line of succession is more truly a descendant than other descendants. It is supposed that the eldest sons all the way are more truly descendants than the progeny of younger sons, or the posterity of daughters who have lost the very name. But each line of descent, whether by younger sons or by daughters, is just as real and as close as the one termed lineal agnatic. Every ancestor living 700 years ago has contributed as truly to the vitality of a present representative as the one whose name he bears, and whose peculiarly direct descendant he is considered to be.

It is morally certain, then, that all Englishmen of this generation are descendants of William the Conqueror and of Alfred the Great, and all the nobles of their times whose posterity have not died out. When we read in history of a brave deed done by an Englishman seven centuries since or more, we may say with confidence it was done by one of our fore-elders. And, when we read of one at that distant period who was a dishonor to his country, we may say with certainty he also was one of our ancestors. All the lords, princes, and sovereigns, all the wise and good, the moral and intellectual aristocracy, were our forefathers, and we are their children by direct descent. Equally all the toiling myriads, without distinction of any kind, all the beggars and vagabonds, all the villains and scoundrels, were our forefathers, whoever we may boast ourselves to be, if, indeed, they have left descendants in the land. We are of them, and their blood circulates in our veins.

If the fact of our equal descent from so many ancestors be doubted, let the matter be tested arithmetically within the circle of two or three generations. The grandmother on the mother's side was equally my ancestor with the grandfather on the father's side. She was one of four ancestors that I had in the second generation, and owns a full quarter of me. The great-grandmother on the mother's side is equally an ancestor with the great-grandfather on the father's side. She was one of eight ancestors that I had in the third generation, and claims a full eighth of me. Similarly all standing on the successive steps of genealogical descent, and whose number is seen to be doubled at every step as we rise from the lowest upward, stand on the same level, and have equal claim to ownership in those coming after them.

Some deduction has doubtless to be made from the above rule on account of the recurrence, to a certain extent, of the same lines of