THE STUDY OF HEREDITY 337 



is of the greatest importance in relation to eugenics. I think 

 that almost every one who has studied the matter at all 

 thoroughly will agree in the main with Prof. Davenport's 

 general conclusions. His opinion that all characters are in- 

 herited in an alternative manner does not matter so very much, 

 whether he be right or, as I think, wrong ; for the overwhelm- 

 ing proportion of the characters which would be selected by 

 the eugenic methods would be recent variations — individual or 

 personal characters, in fact — which are, according to the evidence 

 available, inherited alternatively. I cannot, however, see eye to 

 eye with him with regard to the crossing of black and white 

 races or indeed any races, for the process of swamping unde- 

 sirable racial characters would be a very lengthy and uncertain 

 one; as 1 have already said, it does not appear that racial 

 characters can be segregated by breeding. I cannot agree with 

 him either that mental traits, such as imbecility and criminalistic 

 tendencies, have come down directly through an unbroken suc- 

 cession of generations of individuals from our animal ancestors. 

 The very factors in the environment which have produced an 

 intellect incomparably superior to that of our ape-like progenitors, 

 and a high standard of morality in the majority of individuals, 

 must have continually eliminated variations in other directions. 

 It seems to me more reasonable to account for these characters 

 through the constant occurrence of variations in all directions. 

 The latter view is surely also a much more hopeful one. There 

 is some danger in Prof. Davenport's suggestion that individuals 

 who, according to the results of the Mendelian experiments and 

 observations, are capable of producing offspring with unde- 

 sirable characters only when mated with others who are 

 similarly capable, should be allowed to marry individuals that 

 possess a clean pedigree. This means preserving the potenti- 

 ality of producing the undesirable characters indefinitely. In 

 his conclusions he appears also to have forgotten his own 

 statement, that crossed characters always bear traces of their 

 opposite. In spite of being apparently at times too much 

 influenced by sentimental reasons in his suggestions, there is 

 no doubt that if the measures Prof. Davenport advocates in his 

 valuable book were adopted, an enormous benefit to mankind 

 would result. His reasons are stated clearly, and though 

 apparently his softer feelings prevent him in all cases from 

 arriving at the complete logical conclusions which must result 

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