70 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION 



villages. Thus it comes to pass in some districts that 

 the country, which supplies the most natural and healthy 

 environment, becomes populated with a lower kind of 

 humanity. By the continued removal of the best 

 elements, the remaining inhabitants are left to breed to 

 the worst type of the people. 



In dealing with the various aspects of the problem 

 of the mentally defective, we have left to the last the 

 all-important question of the rate of their reproduction. 

 There is undoubtedly a very high mortality among their 

 offspring. We should expect this mortality, both on 

 account of the constitutional weakness which seems to 

 accompany many forms of mental defect, and also from 

 the fact that feeble-minded parents cannot and do not 

 bring up their children with even the average sense and 

 care belonging to their station. Drink, crime, vice are 

 rife in their homes ; unemployment is the normal 

 occupation of the breadwinner ; neglect and ill- 

 treatment increase the incidence of physical infirmity. 

 Yet with all these checks, the unrestricted fertility of 

 the mentally defective is sufficient to constitute a 

 serious menace to the race ; serious at any time, but 

 more so at a period when the decline in the birth-rate 

 among the better-educated and more self-respecting 

 classes is so unmistakable as to cause alarm even to 

 statesmen. It is not surprising that the ratio of the 

 number of insane persons under the control of the 

 Commissioners in Lunacy to the number of the popu- 

 lation at large has increased by ninety-two per cent in 

 the last fifty years. 



On the two points of the fertility of the feeble- 



