ELIMINATIVE MEASURES 531 



(2) Is there not much to be said in support of the view that 

 many of the unfit are only modificationaUy unfit — simply ill- 

 nourished plants in the crowded garden ? Are we not apt to 

 underrate the plasticity of human nature and the ready re- 

 pressibility of hereditary items ? Is there strictly speaking 

 such a thing as a transmissible disease, apart from pre-natal 

 infection ? Is not a predisposition to disease the most that 

 is transmitted ? Are not many criminals mere anachronisms ? — 

 people out of time or out of place, who require not incarceration 

 or worse, but only transplanting. Records of Jukes' families, or 

 of the woman whose 709 descendants cost the state a quarter of 

 a million are impressive, but one has to remember the modifi- 

 cational effect of social ostracism. One can hardly doubt that 

 the high rate of criminals among illegitimate children — said to 

 form one-tenth of the births in Germany — is artificially created. 

 In passing we may note, as of interest, the formation of a League 

 in Germany to protect not merely illegitimates, but their 

 mothers. 



(3) While it is undoubtedly true that strongly developed evil 

 characters may have a great power of persistence even beyond 

 the third and fourth generation, just as strongly developed good 

 characters may have, is there not a tendency to exaggerate 

 the consequent tainting of stock ? Dr. Archdall Reid has ex- 

 pounded the tendency of the uncontrolled alcoholic type to work 

 itself out, and the same is true of other types. If germinal 

 selection expresses a reality, we should expect taints to be 

 swamped, just as excellences often are. 



(4) We do not know whether Mendelian phenomena of in- 

 heritance occur in man, but if they do, we should be slow to say 

 that it is not possible to bring a clean thing out of an unclean. 

 When an immune wheat plant and a non-immune are crossed, 

 the resulting hybrids are all susceptible to rust. When these 

 are self-fertilised, i.e. inbred, they produce seed from which 

 appear " rusty " plants and immune plants in the ratio of 3 : 1. 



