time: the refreshing river 



sadistic attitude of this writer towards the working class, other than 

 the conclusions of a sound sociology. 



Sterilisation, indeed, is perhaps the best example of the dangerous 

 possibilities now at the disposal of the advocates of class and race 

 oppression who desire to put their proposals on a scientific basis. 

 J. B. S. Haldane^ in his Lock3^er Lecture for 1934 instanced the case 

 of a labourer recommended for sterilisation in the state of Washington, 

 U.S. after conviction for stealing food. The whole family was of 

 sub-normal intelligence and had been for a long period on the verge 

 of starvation. But as Haldane says it did not occur to the judge 

 either that there might be any connection between the starvation of 

 the children and their mental dullness, or that there was anything 

 wrong with conditions under which a beet-sugar labourer could not 

 earn enough to support five children. The review of Vignes^ shows 

 that there are cases where sterilisation is suitable. But Jennings,^ in 

 his acute enumeration of current popular biological fallacies, points 

 out that many people think that if we prevent the breeding of hereditary 

 defectives we shall largely get rid of such defectives in future genera- 

 tions, and conversely, that superior people come from superior 

 parents, and that these things will continue to happen. Any society 

 that carries out this plan will be in for a great disappointment. For 

 unfortunately the great majority of defective genes which cause the 

 troubles we want to get rid of are contained in normal people who 

 carry them just as "typhoid-carriers" carry the bacilli of typhoid 

 fever widiout ever getting it themselves. Thus 0.3 per cent of the 

 world's population is actually suflFering from feeblemindedness, but 

 no less than 10 per cent is composed of people carrying the defective 

 genes, while normal themselves. R. A. Fisher's calculations* showed 

 that about 1 1 per cent of the feebleminded of any generation come 

 from the mating of the feebleminded of the previous generation, 

 while 89 per cent of them come from matings among the carrier group. 

 The converse case, that of genius, almost certainly works in the same 

 way, according to Raymond Pearl.^ It is unfortunately only too 



^ J. B. S. Haldane, Human Biology and Politics, Lockyer Lecture, British Science 

 Guild, 1934. 



^ H. Vignes, La Presse Medicale, 1934, May 19th and June 13th, 



^ H. S. Jennings, The Biological Basis of Human Nature (London, 1930). 



* R. A. Fisher, Journ. Hered., 1927, 18, 529. See also J. B. S. Haldane, New Paths 

 in Genetics (Allen & Unwin, London, 1941), esp. p. 115 flf. 



' R. Pearl, Amer. Mercury, 1927, 12, 257. Pearl employed the following method 

 Genius was, for the present purpose, defined as that which entitles its bearer to more 

 than one page of space in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Among the 126 parents of 63 



162 



