hereditary—Importance of heredity in insanity not appreciated.

  IX Crime and Delinquency 263   Heredity and environment in this field—Feeble-mindedness often a factor—Many delinquent girls mentally deficient—Institutional figures misleading—Many prisoners mentally subnormal—Inhibitions necessary to social welfare—The high-grade moron a difficult problem—Degenerate strains—Intensification of defects by inbreeding—Vicious surroundings not a sufficient explanation in degenerate stocks—Not all delinquents defectives—No special inheritable crime-factor—What is a born criminal?—Epileptic criminal especially dangerous—The mental disorders most frequently associated with crime—Bearing of immigration on crime and delinquency—Sexual vice—School instruction in sex-hygiene—Mere knowledge not the crux of the sex problem—Early training in self-restraint an important preventive of crime and delinquency—Multiplication of delinquent defectives must be prevented.   X Race Betterment Through Heredity 289   Questionable charity—Past protests—An increasing flood of defectives—Natural elimination of defectives done away with—Why not prevent our social maladies?—Eugenics defined—Improved environment alone will not cure racial degeneracy—Heredity and environment—Inter-racial marriage—Human conservation—Kindness in the long run—The problem has two phases—Constructive eugenics must be based on education—Inferior increasing more rapidly than superior stocks—An unselected population may contain much valuable material—The lack of criteria for judging fitness—The college graduate—Native ability, independence and energy eugenically desirable—Four children to each marriage required to maintain a stock—Factors contributing to low birth-rate in desirable strains—The educated public must be made to realize the situation—Utilization of family pride as a basis for constructive eugenics—The tendency for like to marry like—Public opinion as an incentive to action—Choosing a marriage mate means choosing a parent—The best eugenic marriage also a love match—The elimination of the grossly unfit urgent—Suggested remedies—Inefficacy of laws which forbid marriage of mental defectives—Systems of mating impracticable in the main—Corrective mating presupposes knowledge of eugenics—Segregation has many advocates—Sterilization as a eugenic measure—To what conditions applicable—In insanity—In feeble-mindedness—In cases of epilepsy—Sterilization laws—Social dangers in vasectomy—Our present knowledge insufficient—Sterilization laws on trial—An educated public sentiment the most valuable eugenic agent—The question of personal liberty—Education of women in eugenics needed—Much yet to be done—A working program—Which shall it be?     Glossary 343     References for Further Reading and Study 355     Index 361

 

 

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BEING WELL-BORN

 

CHAPTER I

HEREDITY

It is a commonplace fact that offspring tend to resemble their parents. So commonplace, indeed, that few stop to wonder at it. No one misunderstands us when we say that such and such a young man is “a chip off the old block,” for that is simply an emphatic way of stating that he resembles one or the other of his parents. The same is true of such familiar expressions as “what’s bred in the bone,” “blood will tell,” and kindred catch phrases. All are but recognitions of the same common fact that offspring exhibit various characteristics similar to those of their progenitors.

Blood Heritage.—To this phenomenon of resemblance in successive generations based on ancestry the term heredity is applied. In man, for instance, there is a marked tendency toward the reappearance in offspring of structures, habits, features, and even personal mannerisms, minute physical defects, and intimate mental peculiarities like those possessed by their parents or more remote forebears. These personal characteristics based on descent from a common source are what we may call the blood heritage of the child to discriminate it from a wholly different kind of inheritance, namely, the passing on from one generation to the next of such material things as personal property or real estate.

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. Still further, he has many distinctive features of mind and body that we recognize as family traits and lastly, his personal characteristics such as designate him to us as Tom, Harry, or James must be added. The latter would include such minutiæ as size and shape of ears, nose or hands; complexion; perhaps even certain defects; voice; color of eyes; and a thousand other particulars. Although we designate these manifold items as individual, they are in reality largely more or less duplicates of similar features that occur in one or the other of his progenitors, features which he would not have in their existing form but for the hereditary relation between him and them.

“O Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.!
Strange is the gift that I owe to you;
·····
What if a hundred years ago
Those close-shut lips had answered ‘No,’
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Should I be I, or would it be