54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Although the limits of this class must always vary with the advance 

 of criminology and pathology, we can almost all agree as to the in- 

 clusion of certain individuals. Among the mentally unfit for parent- 

 age may be counted the insane, the feeble-minded, and the epileptic, 

 leaving to the future the question of " backward " children. While the 

 criminal classes mark roughly the boundaries of the morally unfit, 

 political offenders must of course be excluded from the category, and 

 we must not forget that many of our criminals are made, not born, and 

 may represent valuable variations from type. Our laws in general 

 would better follow the tendency seen in Ferri's positive school of 

 criminology, and determine the treatment from the nature of the crim- 

 inal rather than of the crime. Those malefactors who show no im- 

 provement under reformatory influences or the indeterminate sentence 

 may surely be included, as also all those whose record displays an ex- 

 cessively anti-social nature, from the murderer to the habitual drunkard. 



Any attempt to Aveed out the physically unfit must proceed still 

 more carefully, for we are not yet competent to point out just who come 

 under this classification. We may be tolerably sure as to those afflicted 

 with syphilis and with congenital defects of the senses, among the latter 

 being reckoned many cases of deafness. Schuster's 2 investigations give 

 the high rate of .54 for parental and .73 for fraternal inheritance in 

 deafmutism, and other statistics give the percentage of deaf among the 

 children of deaf parents as eight per cent, as compared with one tenth 

 per cent, in the population as a whole. As to all others action should 

 be very conservative, since natural selection may be trusted to take care 

 of mere weakness and susceptibility to special bacterial diseases. In 

 any case, it is a long and tedious process to weed out a disease suscepti- 

 bility from man. A certain consumptive stock, for example, may 

 happen to be of high social value, and there is better prospect of 

 conquering tuberculosis by medical means than by the severe processes 

 of artificial selection. 



The prohibition of marriage within certain degrees of consanguin- 

 ity would doubtless assist these preventive measures materially and 

 here a beginning was made many ages ago. As far back as the Mosaic 

 law, we see certain degrees of consanguinity proscribed under severe 

 penalties, and this eugenic regulation forms a part of every civilized 

 code. 



As the list of unfit must vary considerably with scientific advance, 

 it is best for the present to agree on the obvious defectives just men- 

 tioned, to study human heredity with redoubled vigor, and to consider 

 carefully the means by which this prevention of parenthood may be 

 brought about. 



2 K. Pearson, " Scope and Importance to the State of the Science of National 

 Eugenics," p. 28. 



