HEREDITY 33 



HEREDITY, CULPABILITY, PRAISEWORTHINESS, PUNISH- 

 MENT AND REWARD 



By De. C. B. davenport 

 carnegie institution of washington, cold spring harbor^ n, y. 



MODERN studies in heredity are yielding results whose social bear- 

 ings can not be overestimated; and of these bearings not the 

 least significant are those that relate to responsibility. To make these 

 bearings clear we have, first of all, to grasp the current views about man. 



It is often stated that man is a gregarious species; this illustrates 

 the old point of view. Now we say : " Man is a congeries of elementary 

 species or hiotypes and hybrids between such; and some or most of these 

 biotypes are gregarious." It is the necessary abandonment of the view 

 that mankind is fundamentally uniform and homogeneous that involves 

 such a change of our fundamental conceptions. There is, indeed, no 

 statement that can be made about man that is universally true ; and here 

 is where our social codes, our laws, our works on ethics find their real 

 limitations. We hear it said : " Human nature is pretty much the same 

 the world over" — yes, in its variety. 



Let us consider some of the evidence for such biotypes in man. 

 Every one is familiar with the ordinary anthropological races ; the white- 

 skinned, black-skinned, brown-skinned, yellow-skinned and red-skinned. 

 And inside each of these races no less marked subraces or strains may be 

 distinguished. Take the white race alone. There are the blue-eyed 

 subrace of Scandinavia and the brown-eyed subrace of the Mediterranean 

 coast; the straight-haired western Finns and the curly-haired strains 

 found in spots of Scotland ; the tall strain of Ayrshire and Galloway and 

 the short strain of Polish Jews; the dolicocephalic Corsicans and the 

 brachycephalic Dalmatians. Coming to America we find, similarly, in 

 southern California that a subrace that is nonresistant to tuberculosis 

 and bronchitis has been partially segregated ; in a valley of the Berkshire 

 Mountains is isolated a nearly pure strain of feeble-mindedness, includ- 

 ing much epilepsy and migraine ; in eastern Massachusetts is a partially 

 pure strain of deaf-mutism. We have evidence of localities (frequently 

 much inbred) where are being isolated more or less pure-bred strains of 

 albinos, of dwarfs, of sjTidactyls and polydactyls, of the non-resistant 

 to cancer, of myopics, of hermaphrodites, of melancholies, of eminent 

 scholars (e. g., the D wight-Edwards- Woolsey complex of the Connecticut 

 Valley), of military men and statesmen (e. g., the "first families" of 

 Virginia), of sea captains and naval officers (e. g., the Hull-Foote fam- 

 ily of Connecticut) and so on. Such "families" have just the same 



VOL. LXXXII.— 3. 



