144 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



to environment " those physical traits of mankind which have 

 hitherto by all competent investigators been referred to racial 

 causes — that is, to Heredity." But when he comes to criticise 

 my social doctrines, his faith in Heredity suddenly fails. He 

 thus involves himself in the awkward predicament that, while 

 he denounces me for not as^signing entirely to Heredity the 

 physical traits, he denounces me no less loudly for assigning 

 ethical traits to Heredity as well as to environment. He denies 

 that the existing evidence shows that the "great bulk of the 

 lower classes are truly inferior by Heredity to those above 

 them in the social scale," but he does not venture to challenge 

 the data which I have given, and which since I first wrote have 

 been amply confirmed by further inquiry. But as usual, after 

 his first confident and dogmatic denial, Mr. Houghton makes 

 a fatal admission. " No doubt," he writes, " a certain amount 

 of evolution or elimination of the unfit does take place even 

 in civilised states — an evolution which sends the drunkard, 

 the wastrel and the sluggard to join the dregs of the popu- 

 lation, and confers somewhat tardy laurels on thrift, on 

 forethought, and on intelligence." It will be noticed that he 

 entirely ignores the great quality of moral self-restraint, on 

 which the steady rise of individuals and families depends. 



"In a herd of deer or troop of monkeys," writes Mr. 

 Houghton, " each member enters the world under absolutely 

 equal conditions, and his chance of producing progeny depends 

 on the average on his adaptation to the environment common 

 to the herd. Amongst civilised people, on the other hand, 

 what can be more grotesquely unequal than the environment 

 under which the progeny of different classes enter on the battle 

 of life — between the surroundings of the slum child and those 

 of one born in a ducal house ? Even in the highly improbable 

 event of their receiving an approximately similar scholastic 

 education, the former will from his home environments have 

 received constant suggestions to lie, to steal, and to drink." 

 Mr. Houghton evidently has a much higher idea of the ordinary 

 morality of ducal houses than is usually held by his Socialist 

 brethren, according to whose utterances one would be compelled 

 to believe that to be born in a ducal household means to be 

 reared in the worst of all possible environments. Mr. Houghton 

 censures me for giving any place to environment in racial 

 development, but when he has to maintain that the law of 



