WHAT IS TO BE DONE? 113 



pen to be one of the feeble-minded ones, and so there is 

 propagated nothing but the feeble-minded type. It is 

 equally true that it might be the normal child, with a 

 consequent normal line of descendants ; or still again, 

 it might be one of the intermediate ones that are ca- 

 pable of reproducing again the ratio of three normal to 

 one defective, so that the chance is only one in four of 

 such offspring starting a normal line. 



Let us now turn to the facts as we have them in the 

 Kallikak family. The only offspring from Martin 

 Kallikak Sr. and the nameless feeble-minded girl was 

 a son who proved to be feeble-minded. He married a 

 normal woman and had five feeble-minded children 

 and two normal ones. This is in accordance with 

 Mendelian expectation ; that is to say, there should 

 have been part normal and part defective, half and 

 half, if there had been children enough to give the law 

 of averages a chance to assert itself. The question, 

 then, comes right there. Should Martin Jr. have been 

 sterilized ? We would thus have saved five feeble- 

 minded individuals and their horrible progeny, but we 

 would also have deprived society of two normal indi- 

 viduals ; and, as the results show, these two normals 

 married normal people and became the first of a series 

 of generations of normal people. 



