5i6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE COERELATION BETWEEN MENTAL AND MORAL 



QUALITIES. 



By FREDERICK ADAMS WOODS. M.D.. 



MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. 



TN the present article I projDose to present for tlie first time, so far 

 -^ as I know, some figures proving a perfect correlation between 

 mental and moral qualities. In addition, I have some data showing, 

 not the birth rate, but what is more to the point, the number of chil- 

 dren who have reached adult age, born to ten different groups of 

 parents, arranged according to their moral qualities. Both series of 

 facts taken together give us an insight into the progress of the purely 

 intellectual faculties. They show how the mental level in each genera- 

 tion may be raised by no other force than natural selection. 



The complete acceptance of the theory of the ' survival of the fittest ' 

 as an explanation of evolution has had for one of its greatest bugbears 

 the disbelief that such a force could of itself be sufficient to explain 

 improvement in the higher human traits. In the lower forms of animal 

 life the advantages of intelligence in the struggle for existence are 

 evident. Cunning and strength mean better sustenance or surer escape 

 from natural enemies. But how can such brute forces as these be of 

 determining significance among individuals of the human species, espe- 

 cially during the latter ages in which man has risen above barbarism? 

 That man has evolved is admitted, that he will continue on the 

 upward road is generally believed, but how is an unsolved problem. 



For those who believe in the inheritance of acquired characteristics, 

 the accumulated effects of education and superior outward advantages 

 are the forces on which the present has been built and on which the 

 future is to rely. For those who doubt or deny the old Lamarckian 

 principles, and we believe an increasing number of naturalists belong 

 to this school, no such easy explanation is at hand. Some writers con- 

 sider that acquired characteristics are probably not directly inherited 

 through the physiology of the hereditary mechanism, but that the 

 accumulated culture of each generation creates a new environment 

 which in each generation becomes the bequest handed on to the next. 

 In this way institutions, scientific improvement and traditions go on 

 from century to century in their work of building up the race. It is 

 difficult to see how men really and essentially improved or superior in 

 natural endowments could ever be produced through the working of 

 such a process, even in an aeon of time. And, indeed, it is denied that 



