In this connection it is again worth noting that a really great man is rarely found in an ancestry devoid of ability. This was pointed out in the first chapter, but is certain to strike the genealogist's attention forcibly. Abraham Lincoln is often quoted as an exception; but more recent studies of his ancestry have shown that he is not really an exception; that, as Ida M. Tarbell[162] says, "So far from his later career being unaccounted for in his origin and early history, it is as fully accounted for as is the case of any man." The Lincoln family was one of the best in America, and while Abraham's own father was an eccentric person, he was yet a man of considerable force of character, by no means the "poor white trash" which he is often represented to have been. The Hanks family, to which the Emancipator's mother belonged, had also maintained a high level of ability in every generation; furthermore, Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, the parents of Abraham Lincoln, were first cousins. The more difficult cases, for the eugenist, are rather to be found in such ancestries as those of Louis Pasteur and Michael Faraday. Pasteur[163] might perhaps be justly considered the greatest man France has ever produced; his father was a non-commissioned soldier who came of a long line of tanners, while his mother's family had been gardeners for generations. Faraday, who is worthy to be placed close to Charles Darwin among eminent Englishmen, was the son of a blacksmith and a farmer's daughter. Such pedigrees are striking; and yet, as Frederick Adams Woods has remarked, they ought to strengthen rather than to weaken one's belief in the force of heredity. When it is considered how rarely such an ancestry produces a great man, it must be fairly evident that his greatness is due to an accidental conjunction of favorable traits, as the modern theory of genetics holds; and that greatness is not due to the inheritance of acquired characters, on which hypothesis Pasteur and Faraday would indeed be difficult to explain. Cases of this sort, even though involving much less famous people, will be found in almost every genealogy, and add greatly to the interest of its study, as well as offering valuable data to the professional geneticist.