7 



inheritance of the unfit in all classes of society. rHowever, we do not 

 know en^gh^abput human genetics to predict always the fittest and Ae 



(imfittest. Some of the greatest men the world has seen have sprung 

 from the most humble and unknown stocks. Eugenics, therefore, 

 should aim at giving every individual that is worth preserving in every 

 class a chance of survival. A living wage, enough to ensure a sanitary 

 dwelling and a sufficiency of nourishing food for parents and family, should 

 be possible for every labourer and artisan. For if the rich and the intel- 

 lectuals will in a progressive manner restrict their birth-rate, natural selec- 

 tion is deprived of its rights among these classes, and Eugenists can have no 

 sympathy with such but rather with the masses of the people. The wealth 

 of the nation depends upon labour, and labour demands a'sufficiencv. to live 

 and propagate under far more favourable conditions than now exist in our 

 great cities, where the poorer the people and the more uncertain their wages 

 the higher is the rent demanded for the miserable tenements in which they 

 have to bring up a family. It is a fact, as Professor Karl Pearson keeps 

 urging, that at the present time in Great Britain restriction of families is 

 occurring in one-half or two-thirds of the people, including nearly all the 

 best, while children are being freely born to the feeble-minded, the 

 criminal, the pauper, the thriftless casual labourer, and other denizens, of 

 the one-roomed tenemen'ts of our great cities. The alien Jew and Irish 

 Roman Catholic have large families as their religion prohibits restriction, 

 perhaps unfairly in the case of the Irish, for the poorest classes of the 

 population in some of our large cities are largely of Irish extraction. Profes- 

 sor Pearson keeps warning us that 25% of our population, made up mainly 

 of the above-mentioned poor types, is producing 50% of our children, and 

 if this goes on must lead to degeneracy. If the better classes will not 

 propagate they must pay for the propagation of the poorer classes, and 

 natural selection, aided by human effort, must encourage the propagation 

 of the fit and the cutting off the lines of inheritance of the unfit. 



Yv In considering the subject of Heredity and Eugenics in relation to 

 insanity, we have to ask ourselves what constitutes insanity at the present 

 time. It is often extremely difficult to draw the line between sanity and 

 insanity. jTt~mayr~nTTW'eveT, be asserted that a/person is insane who, on 



< aeeotmt of disease or disordered function of the brain, can no longer feel, 

 thirik or act in accordance with the customs and social usages of the com 

 miinity in which he lives. /K An individual is judged to be sane or insane 

 by his conduct, but behaviour by itself without consideration of the social 

 environment is an insufficient criterion. Every case of msanity is _a 

 biological problem, the solution of which depends_ u^on__a_jgiowjedge_gf 

 what a rpan^wa^J^T^wtr^'ji^iirp-^ and what has happened after birth 

 " nurture." ^^o^.child^is born insane, though it may be born feeble- 

 minded, either from actual organic (Use-age or an inborn germinal cerebral 

 deficiency. The__former, being an acquired character.^ not transmissible ; 



