Toombs : Parenthood 



35 



which the great Eviropean natiuns face 

 today. While our loss in the war just 

 past was in no wise comparable to 

 theirs, the same problem is present in 

 this country, because there is a con- 

 stant tendency toward relative and ab- 

 solute sterility among that class of 

 society which is best fitted to produce 

 the n^xt generation, and the most pro- 

 lific are the less fit to carry on the torch 

 of our civilization. 



The scientific basis upon which a 

 remedy for national death, "race sui- 

 cide," as Theodore Roosevelt so often 

 reminded us, rests upon our knowledge 

 of heredity. An understanding of the 

 mechanism of the inheritance of phys- 

 ical characteristics is necessary if we 

 are to comprehend the foundation upon 

 which the science of eugenics rests. 



When we begin to apply the prin- 

 ciples of heredity to mental peculiarities 

 we enter upon a subject of practically 

 unlimited extent. Take for example, 

 feeblemindedness, which has been ex- 

 tensively studied by Dr. Goddard, head 

 of the training school for such unfor- 

 tunates, at Vineland, New Jersey. By 

 repeated tests and observations he has 

 demonstrated that when both parents 

 are feeble-minded all of the children 

 will also be so ; but if one parent be 

 normal and of normal ancestry, all of 

 the children may be normal ; whereas 

 if the normal mate have defective germ 

 cells, one-half of his progeny by a 

 feeble-minded woman will be defective. 

 It has been noted that feeble-minded- 

 ness and epilepsy often replace each 

 other in a family pedigree. 



Rosanoff has demonstrated that if 

 both parents are the victims of maniac 

 depressive insanity or of dementia 

 precox, their entire family will be neu- 

 ropathic, but if one parent only comes 

 from weak stock and if afifected, only 

 half of the children are liable to go 

 insane ; and lastly, that such "nervous 

 breakdowns" do not occur in families 

 where both parents are sound and from 

 untainted stock. 



Fallacy of "The Melting Pot" 



The principal fact to be drawn from 

 the most recent and exact scientific 

 investigations is that the blending of 

 family or racial traits does not take 

 place, and the "melting-pot" in which 

 men of every nation under heaven could 

 l)e converted into a homogeneous na- 

 tion is naught but a phantom of the 

 imagination. It has been proved that 

 unit characters do not blend and after 

 many generations a certain given char- 

 acteristic may crop out all uninfluenced 

 by repeated unions with foreign germ- 

 plasms. This forces us to the conclu- 

 sion that the influence of the individual 

 on the race is a thing of prime impor- 

 tance, and the responsibility of every 

 potential parent looms full of signifi- 

 cance to all his fellow citizens. The 

 chance of being "lost in the crowd" 

 becomes relatively much smaller. 



Galton's first studies were made ])ar- 

 ticularly to show that heredity had 

 much more influence than environment 

 in determining traits of character, and 

 he devoted his attention especially to 

 that complex of desirable mental char- 

 acteristics which we term genius. One 

 study was upon Fellows of the Royal 

 Society which usually lists among its 

 members most of the eminent scientists 

 of the British nation. Galton assumed 

 that at least one per cent of such a 

 membership might reasonably be ex- 

 pected to be "noteworthy." As a rule 

 not more than one in four thousand of 

 our population gets his name in Who's 

 Who, which is only one-fortieth of one 

 per cent. Galton's results showed that 

 on the basis of one per cent the fellows 

 of the Royal Society had noteworthy 

 fathers with twenty-four times the fre- 

 quency of the general population, note- 

 worthy brothers with thirty-one times 

 the frequency to be expected in the 

 general population, and noteworthy 

 grandfathers with twelve times the ex- 

 pected frequency. In another study of 

 the judges of England between 1660 

 and 1865 — a period of slightly more 

 than two hundred years — he found that 



