CRIMINAL TAINT HEREDITARY 297 



It must not be supposed that the writer is a special 

 advocate of all or any of the suggestions which have 

 been mentioned above. They are only alluded to in 

 order to indicate the directions in which the problem 

 of race- improvement may be attacked. 



The point of view which has been adopted in the 

 present chapter is very well summed up in the following 

 paragraph from a paper by Prof. Karl Pearson : 



' As we have found conscientiousness is inherited, 

 so I have little doubt that the criminal tendency 

 descends in stocks. To-day we feed our criminals up, 

 and we feed up the insane ; we let both out of the 

 prison or the asylum " reformed " or " cured," as the 

 case may be, only after a few months to return to 

 State supervision, leaving behind them the germs of 

 a new generation of deteriorants. The average number 

 of crimes due to the convicts in His Majesty's prisons 

 to-day is ten apiece. We cannot reform the criminal 

 nor cure the insane from the standpoint of heredity ; 

 the taint varies not with their moral or mental conduct. 

 These are the products of the somatic cells ; the disease 

 lies deeper in their germinal constitution. Education 

 for the criminal, fresh air for the tuberculous, rest and 

 food for the neurotic these are excellent. They may 

 bring control, sound lungs, and sanity to the individual ; 

 but they will not save the offspring from the need of 

 like treatment, nor from the danger of collapse, when 

 the time comes. They cannot make a nation sound in 

 mind and body ; they merely screen degeneracy behind 

 a throng of arrested degenerates. Our highly developed 

 human sympathy will no longer allow us to watch 



