EUGENICS 



127 



differences which have been made since Francis Galton led the way, I 

 do not find one that lends any support to the doctrine of human initial 



■1> 



er cent 



I 



Grade reached at the age of 13. 



Chart 3. Thb Relative Frequencies of Different Amounts of Pboqebss 

 IN School of Thietkkn-ibab-old Children. 



equality, total or approximate. On the contrary, every one of them 

 gives evidence that if the thousand babies born this week in New York 

 City were given equal opportunity they would still differ in much the 

 same way and to much the same extent as they wiU in fact differ. 



We find, for instance, that the children of certain families rank very 

 much higher in certain psychological tests of perception, association and 

 the like, than the children of certain other families. Now if this differ- 

 ence were due to the difference between the two groups of families in 

 environment — in ideals, customs, hygienic conditions and the like — it 

 should increase greatly with the age of the children in some rough pro- 

 portion to the length of time that they are subject to the beneficent or 

 unfavorable environment. It does not. One family's product differs 

 from another nearly as much at the age of 9 to 11 as at the age of 

 12 to 14. 



Again, if inequalities in the environment produce the greater part 

 of these differences, equalizing opportunity and training should greatly 

 reduce them. Such equalization is found by experiment to reduce them 

 very little, if at all. Chart 4 shows, for example, the result of equal 

 amounts of training applied to two groups of adults whom life in gen- 

 eral had previously brought to the conditions shown at the left of the 

 chart. The trait chosen was addition; from life in general one group 

 had gained the ability to do twenty-seven more additions per minute 

 than the other group, accuracy being equal in the two groups. At the 

 end of the special training the superior individuals had gained on the 

 average 28 additions per minute, while the inferior individuals gained 



