286 Heredity and Environment 



than the legal requirements in many of our States today. Public 

 sentiment has been greatly aroused on this question; the appar- 

 ent increase in the number of defectives and criminals has seemed 

 to call for radical action and a flood of hasty but well intentioned 

 legislation has been the result. We may confidently expect that 

 in a very short time the marriage of the feeble-minded, hopelessly 

 insane or epileptic, the congenitally blind, deaf and dumb, and 

 those suffering from many other inherited defects which unfit 

 them for useful citizenship will be prohibited by law in all the 

 States. Our immigration laws already exclude such aliens, and 

 the number of persons of the types named who seek legal consent 

 to marry is not large so that it need not be expected that such 

 laws will quickly improve the general population. If in addition 

 such persons are either segregated or sterilized the danger of 

 their leaving illegitimate offspring will be removed; such pre- 

 cautions have been taken in certain of our States and will prob- 

 ably become general, though at present few of the laws on this 

 subject are strictly enforced. 



The study of heredity shows that the normal brothers and 

 sisters, and even the more distant relatives, of affected persons 

 may carry a defect as a recessive in their germ plasm and may 

 transmit it to their descendants though not showing it themselves. 

 It will be more difficult, perhaps an impossible thing, to apply rig- 

 idly the principles of good breeding to such persons and to exclude 

 them from reproduction; but if in each generation those persons 

 in whom this recessive trait appears are prevented from leaving 

 offspring the number of persons affected will gradually grow less, 

 other conditions being equal. 



But while such negative eugenical measures are wholly com- 

 mendable when applied to such defects as those named, which are 

 certainly inherited and which render those affected unfit for citi- 

 zenship, the wholesale sterilization of all sorts of criminals, 

 alcoholics and undesirables without determining whether their 

 defects are clue to heredity or to conditions of development would 

 be like burning down a house to get rid of the rats ; and the only 



