66 



The Journal of Heredity 



to destroy society as a living organism 

 and replace it with an arbitrary and 

 artificial system directed from below by 

 the less intelligent elements of the 

 population should prevail, an era of 

 extreme depression and chaos might 

 easily come upon us, a period of disin- 

 tegration and decay like that of the 

 Roman Empire and the dark ages that 

 followed the complete overturning of 

 society. Think of the Spanish Inquisi- 

 tion from the standpoint of propa- 

 ganda. Recall how it swept over and 

 blasted a capable and rapidly develop- 

 ing nation and ran into other countries 

 like an epidemic. Can we be confident 

 that those who think they can control 

 public opinion know what they are 

 doing — especially when we see errone- 

 ous ideas and misstatements of fact in 

 this torrent of propaganda? As scien- 

 tific men we know more facts and see 

 the drift of many things, but our hon- 

 esty, and especially our repugnance 

 towards self advertising, prevents ' us 

 from taking the place which we ought 

 to take in the councils of the people. 

 We cannot reach them with our scien- 

 tific jargon, and our desire to be true 

 to the cult of our science and to stand 

 well with our professional colleagues 

 keeps us from popularizing our ideas 

 and thus exerting at least a fraction of 

 the influence which is our right and 

 our responsibility as students of these 

 tremendous problems. 



We are here as members of the 

 American Genetic Association, an asso- 

 ciation of scientific men and of those 

 who are interested in the grreat subject 

 of heredity and its relation to human 

 welfare. And we are citizens of a 

 country which stands before the world 

 as no country before has stood. The 

 times are fraught with the greatest 

 dangers, and these dangers lie in the 

 realm of the understanding and are 

 based upon certain laws of inheritance, 

 which we are investigating. One of the 

 greatest tools which can be used to edu- 

 cate the public is the tool of illustra- 

 tion. The most prominent feature in 

 the propaganda program is the use of 

 striking pictures, pictures Vv-bich really 

 tell a story ; pictures which have been 



prepared for the express purpose of 

 producing a certain effect. You all 

 know, as well as I do, that we have the 

 materials, and what we should do is to 

 use them for the enlightenment of a 

 widening audience of the most intelli- 

 gent people of the country. 



The situation, as I see it, constitutes 

 one of the greatest opportuniies of our 

 lives, and I cannot overemphasize my 

 feelings in the matter, for they amount 

 to conviction. If we handle the situa- 

 tion at this time, we will do a great 

 service to the world. If we do not, we 

 fail, and a great opportunity passes. 

 While we delay or hesitate, other or- 

 ganizations, with more obvious but less 

 important appeals to the intelligence of 

 the people, are forging ahead with 

 evanescent, distorted and moral-de- 

 stroying propaganda. 



Our propaganda should be against 

 the almost universal fallacy which per- 

 vades society ideas everywhere that 

 acquired characters are somehow and 

 in some mysterious way inherited. The 

 non-inheritance of acquired characters 

 is a well-established theory, but the 

 general public does not know it. 

 Through the educational propaganda, 

 through the charitable propaganda, 

 through the sporting propaganda and 

 through the medical propaganda there 

 runs everywhere the unspoken assump- 

 tion that, given a good environment, 

 any child is as likely to be great as any 

 other ; and everywhere we find people 

 who are searching for all of the causes 

 of crime and degeneracy in the environ- 

 ment. The wayward son of the 

 preacher, the deaf from childhood, the 

 small-sized boys of small parents who 

 ''never got enough to eat when they 

 were young." th-^ effect of hats a^ 

 causes of baldness, the causes of lon- 

 gevity, and a host of others are now 

 "exDlained" by those who do not know. 

 Millions of dollars are expended every 

 year upon palliative remedies with the 

 firm conviction of the givers that they 

 are curative measures, whereas they 

 end with the generation thev assist. 



If through the propaganda of this 

 little Journal of the Association we 

 could get a hundred thousand people to 



