12 



an extent as the mentally feeble. The progeny begotten of a feeble-minded 

 mother by a drunken father, according to my experience, is much more 

 likely to be born mentally defective or become insane in later life than 

 when both parents are intemperate, but neither of inherent mental defi- 

 ciency. I have many pedigrees which seem to indicate that a perfectly 

 sound stock may degenerate from a combination of pathogenic factors, viz., 

 stress of town life, alcoholism, syphilis, and tuberculosis occurring in the 

 progenitors in successive generations. Wage-earning capacity of the masses 

 depends upon two factors, energy and sagacity, and the feeble-minded are 

 usually deficient in both, but their deficiency in energy, physical and 

 mental, is largely due to an inborn deficiency, but not always, or alto- 

 gether, for owing to their low wage-earning capacity, the environmental 

 conditions are correspondingly poor, especially is this the case with the 

 denizens of the one-roomed tenements of our great cities. Bad sanitation, 

 insufficient food, air and sunlight, alcoholism, syphilis, tuberculosis, and 

 infectious diseases all conspire together to sap the vital energy of the un- 

 employed, the casual labourer, the women, especially mothers, and the 

 children. By no means all these people are of the eugenically unfit; many 

 by improvement of their environment may have that restoration of vital 

 energy which is essential for will power and the exercise of an inborn 

 sagacity which chance, opportunity, or ill fortune has denied them. In 

 proof of this you have only to visit such schools as Shenfield, or even 

 Barnardo's Homes, to see that environment plays a very important part in 

 the development of energy, sagacity, and character. You cannot make 

 good material out of bad raw material, but fairly good material or even 

 good material may be spoiled by a bad environment. Even an inborn virtue 

 may, by evil surroundings, become the source of the worst vices. 



The Effects of Poisons, e.g., Alcohol, Syphilis, and Tuberculosis, upon the 



Germ-plasm. 



An important racial question is this : Do poisons, such as syphilis, alcohol, 

 and tuberculosis, diminish the vital energy of the male and female germ 

 prior to conjugation and cause pathological variations? 



It is a known fact that toxins weaken cells, and therefore why not 

 germ-cells? For although the sexual cells are segregated in the body, 

 they are of the body and nourished by the same blood and lympth, and 

 there is consequently reason for supposing that these most potent and pre- 

 valent poisons, alcohol, syphilis, and tuberculosis, may, without killing the 

 germ-cells diminish their specific vital energy and thus lead to various patho- 

 logical conditions of the body, and especially of the nervous system. 

 There can be no doubt that syphilis of the parents may lead to infantilism 

 in the offspring evidenced by arrest of development of the secondary sexual 

 characters. If syphilis can produce arrest of development of the reproduc- 

 tive organs, there is no reason why it should not lead to arrest of develop- 



