Kohs: New Light on Eugenics 



447 



common to all, hence the uniformity of 

 the more elementary feelings and ten- 

 dencies of the race. Each and every 

 individual is heir to all the experiences 

 of past generations" (Atkinson (2), p. 

 98-99). 



With this feeble attempt at re- 

 orienting ourselves to the truly wide 

 aspect of inheritance, we come to a 

 weak spot in many a positive eugenic 

 program. There is a tendency on the 

 part of some to include in the list of 

 hereditary characters certain mental, 

 emotional and moral traits which seem 

 to be the peculiar possession of partic- 

 ular families. The hereditability of the 

 following have been maintained by 

 various authors: tact, power of expres- 

 sion, lying, nomadism, endurance, stub- 

 bornness, bad temper, sentimentality, 

 good judgment, morality, character, 

 industry, criminality, affability, left- 

 handedness, antipathy for physicians, 

 fear of water, disgust for certain articles 

 of food — e.g., cheese. Heymans and 

 Wiersma observed that parents and 

 offspring resembled each other, among 

 other things, in ardor, impulsiveness, 

 resolution, persistence, generosity, tem- 

 perance, wit, patience and industry. 

 Davenport enumerates talents in music, 

 art, literature, mechanics, invention, 

 mathematics; the degree of sensitivity, 

 quick or dull, keen or poor; the type of 

 disposition, cheerful or melancholic ; self- 

 ish or altruistic ; conscientiousness or lia- 

 bility to shirk. "These characteristics," 

 he says (10), "are inheritable; they are 

 independent of each other, and they 

 may be combined in any desirable 

 mosaic" (p. 6). Crzellitzer's list of 

 heritable traits includes ability in music, 

 sculpture, painting and mathematics; 

 thriftiness, temperament, liberality and 

 military ability. He quotes the work 

 of Fiirst and Jung and their observa- 

 tions of family resemblances by means 

 of the association-reaction method. But 

 what they proved was not that certain 

 common ideas or attitudes are inherited, 

 but rather that developed family "com- 

 plexes" exist. This question will be 

 further elucidated later. Besides those 

 characteristics already mentioned, Jose- 

 fovici adds diplomacy and ability in 



Pearson found such qualities as viva- 

 city, conscientiousness, popularity, tem- 

 per, introspection or self-consciousness,, 

 and assertiveness, to run in families. 

 This may be coupled with the following 

 interesting statement made by Daven- 

 port (9): The "boldness, swiftness, 

 certainty of manipulation and that 

 precise knowledge which belong to the 

 great surgeon are not due to himself,, 

 but were, in their elements, antecedent 

 to him. He could not help his valuable 

 innate qualities, his knowledge is largely 

 a heritage of the past, his education has 

 been possible because of his educability 

 and because of preexisting knowledge" 

 (p. 38) . One wonders how close Daven- 

 port came to saying that information 

 and dexterity acquired in one genera- 

 tion are transmitted in the next. 



WEAK POINTS IN RESULTS 



Most of the above studies are of 

 doubtful value because of any one or 

 more of these reasons : 



(1) Inaccurate tools with which to 

 measure the ability or capacity. 



(2) Amateur field- workers. 



(3) The use of the questionnaire 

 method. 



(4) Where more than one field- 

 worker was necessary to obtain the 

 data, differences in the individual stand- 

 ards of the field- workers vitiated the 

 results. 



(5) Being told for what to look, and 

 possessing the popular conceptions re- 

 garding the inheritability of all sorts of 

 traits, it is only just to assume that many 

 of the assistants very easily found what 

 was not there. 



(6) The study of character and per- 

 sonality is still in its infancy. To 

 assume that certain peculiarities are 

 due to the presence or absence of specific 

 determiners can, in our present state 

 of knowledge, hardly be substantiated 

 by actual facts. 



(7) Some students approach the prob- 

 lem of the inheritance of mental traits 

 fresh from the biological laboratory. 

 Without hesitation they will assume, 

 for example, that the overzealous care 

 of one's dress is a unit character, 

 recessive to all appearances, acting in 



