60 THE KALLIKAK FAMILY 



Such facts as those revealed by the Kallikak family 

 drive us almost irresistibly to the conclusion that be- 

 fore we can settle our problems of criminality and paup- 

 erism and all the rest of the social problems that are 

 taxing our time and money, the first and fundamental 

 step should be to decide upon the mental capacity of 

 the persons who make up these groups. We must 

 separate, as sharply as possible, those persons who are 

 weak-minded, and therefore irresponsible, from intelli- 

 gent criminals. Both our method of treatment and our 

 attitude towards crime will be changed when we discover 

 what part of this delinquency is due to irresponsibility. 



If the Jukes family were of normal intelligence, a 

 change of environment would have worked wonders 

 and would have saved society from the horrible blot. 

 But if they were feeble-minded, then no amount of 

 good environment could have made them anything 

 else than 'feeble-minded. Schools and colleges were 

 not for them, rather a segregation which would have 

 prevented them from falling into evil and from procre- 

 ating their kind, so avoiding the transmitting of their 

 defects and delinquencies to succeeding generations. 



Thus where the Jukes-Edwards comparison is weak 

 and the argument inconclusive, the twofold Kallikak 

 family is strong and the argument convincing. 



