334 Kansas Academy of Science. 



twelve or fifteen; and in a majority of cases he succeeded in 

 establishing the fact that feeble-mindedness was a family in- 

 heritance that could be traced back in a number of instances 

 for several generations ; hence the limitations were an inheri- 

 tance. 



Morons and the average negro of full blood are short in 

 their heredity; they lack the later acquisitions of the human 

 race. George Oscar Ferguson, jr., of Columbia University, 

 says, in The Journal of Heredity for April, 1917, p. 153, in com- 

 paring the negro and white races, that "there are no considera- 

 ble group differences in sensation, in motor control, in native 

 retentiveness. The diff'erences to which evidence has pointed 

 have been in such abilities as those included under the terms 

 constructive imagination, the apprehension of meaning, rea- 

 soning power. These latter traits divide mankind into the 

 able and the mediocre, the brilliant and the dull, and they de- 

 termine the progress of civilization more directly than do the 

 simple and fundamental powers which man has in common 

 with the lower animals." 



Even among supposedly normal children heredity imposes 

 its limitations. A superintendent of a city of the first class in 

 Kansas looked up the records of all the pupils who were about 

 to enter the junior high school, and found that they must be 

 arranged in five or six ranks of attainment if he gave them 

 work best suited to their needs. He did not look up the rec- 

 ords of the parents, but had he done so he would have found, 

 undoubtedly, that the same differences existed among the fam- 

 ilies. 



The only scientific inference that can be drawn from the 

 myriad facts of heredity is that powers that man exercises are 

 his mostly by inheritance. Since he exercises these powers 

 through neurones, and since at birth he possesses one-half as 

 many functional neurones as the boy of fifteen possesses, the 

 five or six years of pre-school experience, when his mind, 

 rapidly awakens in response to the stimuli of his environment 

 — these five or six years, I repeat, must largely determine the 

 character of the future man. What, then, is the province of 

 schools in preparing boys and girls for lives of present and fu- 

 ture usefulness? 



4. What is the province of schools ? 



Schools may, perhaps, hasten the fruition of the inherited 

 powers of mind and body, but they cannot increase materially 



