HEREDITARY INEFFICIENCY. 



303 



essentially alike for a period after their birth. The crab 

 continues and develops an active life. The Sacculina 

 thrusts its feelers into the body of the crab on which it 

 is to feed. Its organs of eating and swimming disap- 

 pear. All structures connected with independent life 

 become atrophied, and finally nothing is left of the Sac- 

 ::ulina except its saclike body, its feelers or roots rami- 

 fying through the blood vessels of the crab, and its 

 reproductive organs by which the brood of parasites is 

 kept alive. When the habit of parasitism is once estab- 

 lished, the struggle for existence simply intensifies it 

 From generation to generation. 



The fittest Sacculina is the most degenerate one. In 

 ike manner whenever a race or family of men has fallen 

 iway from self-helpfulness the forces of evolution inten- 

 sify its parasitism. The successful pauper is the one 

 vho retains no capacity for anything else. The loss of 

 ill other possibilities is the best preparation for the life 

 )f the sneak thief. 



Recent studies, as those of Dugdale, McCulloch, and 

 )thers, have shown that parasitism is hereditary in the 

 luman species as in the Sacculina. McCulloch has 

 ielected the Sacculina for special illustration of the 

 esults of like processes in the human family. Like 

 jroduces like in the world of life. Those qualities in 

 he grandparent which made him an outcast from so- 

 ;iety or a burden upon it reappear in the father and 

 igain in the son. As in one case, so in the others, they 

 letermine his relation to society. The pauper is the 

 nctim of heredity, but neither Nature nor society recog- 

 lises that as an excuse for his existence. The forces of 

 ■Mature take no account of motive and are no respecters 

 )f persons. Dugdale has shown that parasitism, pauper- 

 sm, prostitution, and crime reappear generation after 

 i^eneration in the descendants of " Margaret, the mother 



