Ancestors

“ These ancient peoples, at any rate those who were our direct ancestors, or who were closely related to them, are thus, in the language of evolution, which takes no count of time or of the number of generations, our very near relations. The generations which separate them from us and the few hundred generations between them and those of their direct ancestors, who were at the same time ours, represent a limited period from the point of view of the ethnological history of mankind. ”

“ My Ancestry Our history begins before we are born. We represent the hereditary influences of our race, and our ancestors virtually live in us. ”

“ Above all, is the coracle of rare historic interest—as the first venture upon water of a people—the ancestors of a nation that now rules the sea—their descendants proudly styling themselves its "Lords"—not without right and reason. ”

“ Our ancestors, up to the Conquest, were children in arms; chubby boys in the time of Edward I; striplings under Elizabeth; men in the reign of Queen Anne; and we only are the white-bearded, silver-headed ancients, who have treasured up, and are prepared to profit by, all the experience which human life can supply. ”

“ Coming into their heritage, which is the accumulated knowledge and experience of their ancestors, before they have acquired a direct and profound grasp of life, they seem to enter the world full-fledged, while it is only that ancestral heritage that works through the impressions of the youthful brain and gives them the color of age. ”

“ Since the features of the parent tribe are handed down from one generation to another, there is nothing more natural than that we should retain the historical features of our ancestors, viz., the stamp of gravity which the events of their time impressed upon their faces. ”

“ You are acquainted, not by hearsay, but by actual evidence, with the family history, having seen what sort of figure our ancestors cut, and being infinitely better aware of the peculiarities of the genealogical shrub than we can ever be. ”

“ Then turning to his followers, "My children," said he, "I have often heard from men hoary with long life, that there was a time when our ancestors were absolute lords of the woods, the meadows and the lakes, wherever the eye can reach or the foot can pass. They fished and hunted, feasted and danced, and when they were weary lay down under the first thicket, without danger and without fear. ”

“ In this manner had fought forgotten ancestors. They quickened the old life within him, and the old tricks which they had stamped into the heredity of the breed were his tricks. They came to him without effort or discovery, as though they had been his always. And when, on the still cold nights, he pointed his nose at a star and howled long and wolflike, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose at star and howling down through the centuries and through him. ”

“ We see that our ancestors were no savages, but agricultural nomads, that they laboured, made roads, possessed the art of weaving and sewing; they built towns, kept domestic animals, lived under a kingly government, and counted at least up to one hundred. We learn this not only from the words father, mother, son, daughter, heaven, earth, but also from house, town, king, dog, cow, hatchet, and many others, which are found to be the same in the German, Celtic, Slavonic, Greek, Latin, and Sanscrit. ”

“ In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin,— seven or eight ancestors at least, — and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is. ”

“ ⁠The character of the reputed ancestors of some men, has made it possible for their descendants to be vicious in the extreme, without being degenerate. ”

“ Our rural ancestors, with little blest, Patient of labour when the end was rest, Indulged the day that housed their annual grain, With feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain: The joy their wives, their sons, and servants share, Ease of their toil, and partners of their care: The laugh, the jest, attendants on the bowl, Smoothed every brow, and opened every soul: With growing years the pleasing licence grew, And taunts alternate innocently flew. ”

“ But that over, the relapse into stolid indifference is as complete as before. Good or bad, the gentle, trusting, superstitious, timid, easily yielding nature of the ancestors is continued in the descendants. They could be led to noble ends: they have been driven to base uses. ”

“ Yet one had ancestors in literature as well as in one's own race, nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly with an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious. ”

“ These two sets of possibilities are wide, as may easily be seen if we reflect upon the number of ancestors which any one of us must have had, say a thousand years ago. But wide though they be, they have their limitations. ”

“ It is true, that if we consider the triumph and delight with which most of those recount their ancestors, who have ancestors to recount, and the artifices by which some who have risen to unexpected fortune endeavour to insert themselves into an honourable stem, we shall be inclined to fancy that wisdom or virtue may be had by inheritance, or that all the excellencies of a line of progenitors are accumulated on their descendant. ”

“ If the opportunity had been wisely improved, a rational knowledge of the experience of our own ancestors, while in the same status, might have been gained through a study of these progressive conditions. ”

“ Turning to the influence of heredity, we recognized that by it are determined all the most fundamental features of each race and type of man, and that often the individual reverts to the traits of the one or the other of his parents, or of his remote ancestors, in such manner that one trait may belong to one ancestor, another to another. ”

“ Our ancestors listened to the same legends, ballads, and mythical tales while gathered as children about one and the same mother, and they have handed them down to this generation of the descendants of each so little changed as to furnish ample proof of family relationship. ”

“ Like lavish ancestors, his earlier years
Have disinherited his future hours,
Which starve on orts, and glean their former field. ”

“ The proper method of Genealogy consists, it will be seen, in the more or less complete recovery of the texts of successive ancestors by analysis and comparison of the varying texts of their respective descendants, each ancestral text so recovered being in its turn used, in conjunction with other similar texts, for the recovery of the text of a yet earlier common ancestor. ”

“ If we go back ten generations, we have over a thousand ancestors in our line of descent. Each of these people was, in some measure, different from the others. Our inheritance comes from all of them and from each of them. ”

“ The heroes of all Histories, Narratives, Adventures, Novels and Romances, have, or are supposed to have ancestors, or some root from which they sprang. I conclude, then, that it is not altogether inconsistent to suppose that I had parents too. ”

“ An irrefutable proof that such single-celled primæval animals really existed as the direct ancestors of Man, is furnished according to the fundamental law of biogeny (vol. ”

“ Their ancestors were not strangers, nor are these their descendants sojourners only, whose fathers have come from another country; but they are the children of the soil, dwelling and living in their own land. ”

“ We have—besides these, men descended by blood from our ancestors—among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men; they are men who have come from Europe, German, Irish, French, and Scandinavian,—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. ”

“ But, as character is not exactly isolated and independent of ancestral fountains, from which the innate impulses, capacity, and tendency to good and evil have flown, the subject of ancestry justly belongs to the history of every man's mind and life. Our ancestors flow in our veins. We retain them more or less in our characters always, so that the great stress which different countries have put upon this theme, rests on other than artificial and ostentatious reasons. ”

“ In those organic individuals, of which we know that they are descended from one and the same common form of ancestors—in which, therefore, their common ancestry is empirically proved—there can be no doubt that they belong to one species, whether they differ much or little from one another, or whether they are almost alike or very unlike. ”

“ By some it is held that the names of animals, which had been given to ancestors, were interpreted literally by their savage descendants, or that traditions of having come from a certain mountain or river caused these natural objects to be mistakenly regarded as actual progenitors. These suggestions are of very limited value in solving the problem of the origin of the ethnic religions. ”

“ I have frequently observed, that those who boast of the antiquity of their families, are glad when they can join this circumstance, that their ancestors for many generations have been uninterrupted proprietors of the same portion of land, and that their family has never changed its possessions, or been transplanted into any other county or province. ”

“ But as true and worthy representatives of our noble ancestors, our parents were proof against discouragement, surmounted every difficulty, and through the blessing of God on their efforts, created for themselves and their children an enviable home. ”

“ Not that one has a rooted aversion to ancestors—they are not to be despised if they leave you an honourable name, a nice old estate, and cash and some brains, but there are ancestors of whom the less said the better, and whose only legacy would appear to be a slanting forehead, a weak chin, and a tendency to unlimited viciousness. ”

“ They have received it, as they have received a thousand customs which are now among them, by inheritance from the ancestors who bequeathed them, which they received at too early an age to judge concerning their fitness or unfitness, but to which, for the reason of that early reception, they have become fondly attached, even as to parents, brothers, and sisters, from whom they have never been divided. ”

“ Holmes, the only difference between the East and the West seems to be that you have ancestors and that we are going to be ancestors. ”

“ No, they are the homes of our worthy ancestors. Prehistoric man lived thickly on the moor, and as no one in particular has lived there since, we find all his little arrangements exactly as he left them. ”

“ Among the most ancient of these deities, and regarding which the traditions are the most obscure, were their most remote ancestors—certain animals who later were transformed into human shape, the names of the animals being preserved by their descendants, who have used them to designate their gentes or clans. ”

“ Kind Determined by Origin.—It is inheritance in the sense of community of origin that determines whether a given living creature shall be man, beast, bird, fish, or what not. A given individual is human because his ancestors were human. In addition to this stock supply of human qualities he has certain well-marked features which we recognize as characteristics of race. That is, if he is of Anglo-Saxon or Italian or Mongolian parentage, naturally his various qualities will be Anglo-Saxon, Italian, or Mongolian. ”

“ Ancestry a Network.—From the fact that each child has all of the ancestors of its mother as well as of its father, arises the great complications which are met with in determining the lineage of an individual. [Pg 4] A person has two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, and thus following out pedigree it is plain to be seen that through this process of doubling in each generation, in the course of a few centuries one’s ancestry is apparently enormous. ”

“ I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history, if I can succeed in placing before the English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their ancestors. ”

“ Strong hereditary dispositions of character may be recognized in early infancy. When the ancestry of a man is well known the roots of his recent phylogeny may be traced to his ancestors. Here we observe the effect of crossing between varieties or different races, or on the contrary that of consanguinity. ”

“ The antiquity of their race, their sense of its long-suffering and isolation, their pride in the intellectual achievements of those ancestors whose blood, not largely mixed with 20 that of any other race, flows in their veins, lead the stronger or more reflective spirits to revenge themselves by a kind of scorn upon the upstart Western peoples among whom their lot is cast. ”

“ From our more correct acquaintance with the habits of our ancestors, we surely become more closely linked with the interests of our own descent. In the various phases of our civilisation; in the warlike and energetic character of our earlier races ”

“ On the contrary, modern research, as we saw it in the two preceding chapters, proves that since the very beginning of their prehistoric life men used to agglomerate into gentes, clans, or tribes, maintained by an idea of common descent and by worship of common ancestors. ”