36 



The Journal of Heredity 



mvstical help from Xature; il must 

 protect itself by deliberate intervention. 

 At present society fulfils this obli^'a- 

 tion in a very inadequate manner, by 

 se^reti;ating, in some states, a small part 

 of the most hopeless grades of defectives. 

 Even then, they arc not al\va\'s pre- 

 vented from propagating their kind. 

 There is general agreement that cflfcctivc 

 segregation should be extended, but it 

 is of course difficult to say who should 

 and who shoiild not be included. 

 Pearson thinks that it is merely "a 

 matter of practical utility where we 

 draw the line which shall legally define 

 mental defect for purposes of segrega- 

 tion. It certainly should not be done 

 under four years' mental defect judged 

 bv adequate Binet tests. This will 

 only cut ofif about 20 to 30% of those at 

 present classed as feebleminded in the 

 special schools. The remaining 70 or 

 80% may be, and probably are, incap- 

 able of fending for themselves in 

 ordinary Hfe; they are also socially 

 inefficient, but ultimately, on other 

 grounds, temperamental or moral, not 

 merely intellectual : they take a view of 

 life which is in distorted perspective, 

 and the\- arc out of harmony with their 

 economic or social surroundings. They 

 may be more dangerous than those in 

 whom true mental defect is far greater, 

 and they may more urgently stand in 

 need of segregation," because while the 

 groveling idiot is unlikely to become a 

 parent, the moron is ahnost certain to 

 do so, cither legitimately or illegiti- 

 mately, unless prevented by society 

 from doing so. 



How shall this restraint be exercised? 

 In the first place, says Dr. Goddard, as 

 many of the high grade defectives as 

 possible must Vje effectively "segre- 

 gated" in their own homes, by the 

 intelligent action of their own relatives. 

 As to the rest, the lower grades must 

 obviously be gathered together in col- 

 onies, not only for the protection of 

 society, but for their own protection. 

 But if the higher grades are to be 

 included, it will mean the establishment 

 of at least a thousand colonies, each 

 containing 300 or 400 individuals— a 

 burden which the nation is not likely to 

 assume at present. 



"The facts," to Dr. (joddard, "show- 



that we must colonize as many of the 

 feebleminded as we possibly can, that 

 we must sterilize some, and then we 

 discover that we have only tithed the 

 problem, we have not solved it." The 

 rest — all of them, of course, representing 

 the higher grades — should, he says, be 

 educated. 



Im])ossibler 



"That dejjends on our definition of 

 education," he answers. They can be 

 trained, if recognized and taken in hand 

 at an early enough age, to do many kinds 

 of work which do not demand the 

 possession of judgment or real intelli- 

 gence, but which depend rather on habit. 

 Few of them can be taught usefully to 

 read, write, or count, but there are 

 man\- kinds of manual labor that they 

 can be trained to do with sufficient 

 proficiency to pay for their cost of 

 maintenance. Even should the com- 

 munity find itself unable to stop alto- 

 gether the production of this class, at 

 present, "may it not be possible that we 

 will find use for all these people of 

 moderate intelligence, and that the 

 ]3roduction of so many high grade 

 feebleminded is only the production of so 

 many more people who are able and will- 

 ing to do much of the drudgery of the 

 world, which other people will not do?" 



There remains a question of first 

 importance to the eugenist — the relation 

 to marriage selection of the moron who 

 is left at liberty. Here students some- 

 times seem to fall into no more than two 

 classes: those who propose wholesale 

 sterilization, and those who propose 

 nothing. Dr. Goddard takes a middle 

 course, thinking sterilization adequate 

 to dispose of "a narrow zone" of cases; 

 for the rest, it appears that general 

 education of the public to realize that 

 morons exist in large numbers, in all 

 classes of society, and that they can not 

 by outward a])i)earancc be detected, 

 will do much, ]x'rhaps all that is possible, 

 to abolish the problem. When the 

 man or woman contemjilating marriage 

 realizes the desiralnlity of investigating 

 the ancestry of a ])rospectivc mate, the 

 infection of sound stocks by marriage 

 between normal jjcrsons and high-grade 

 morons or those who. wholly nomial in 

 themselves, are carriers of latent feeble- 

 mindedness, will largely cease. 



