104 THE MENDEL JOURNAL 



permanent use to educate a gutter cliild, or to cure 

 an epileptic, because the children will have just the 

 same propensities as though their parents had been 

 utterly neglected. Moreover, such conduct does 

 positive harm, because if the potential parents had 

 not been cared for, the children might not have 

 been born. 



I do not think I overstate Mr. Mudge's case. 

 He says himself : " The whole influence of this 

 modern sentiment is tending in the wrong direction. 

 It sets out with the belief that it can effect the 

 salvation of the unlit by improving their environ- 

 ment. It w^ill end by achieving the destruction of 

 the fit, without having even gained the salvation of 

 the unfit." Again : " It is time we learned how 

 little environment can do, and how much the inborn 

 qualities determine all for us." 



Among much which is admirabh? in Mr. Mudge's 

 able address I cannot help feeling that he has kept 

 out of sight a very important factor, namely, the 

 possibility of creating a permanent environment ; 

 for even if w^e admit to the full Weismann's doctrine 

 that there is no ])iological inheritance of acquired 

 characters, nevertheless there may be a sociological 

 inheritance of the new environment which becomes 

 associated with those acquired characters ; and the 

 inheritance of this new^ environment may be, for all 

 practical purposes, as good as the inheritance of the 

 acquired characters themselves. Let me explain 

 what I mean. If we take children from a slum 



