Genetics and Ethics 323 



in families and can be cured only by extermination. Men who 

 prey upon society were born with wolfish instincts, and cannot 

 help but eat the lambs. Villains, lawbreakers, murderers should 

 be pitied but not punished; if blame attaches to their deeds it 

 falls upon the marriage bureau and the parents. The world needs 

 hospitals and sanatoria and sterilization institutes for the criminal 

 and the vicious, but not courts and prisons, and all punishments 

 should be visited only upon the parents to the third and fourth 

 generations. 



Do our studies of heredity lead us to any such radical conclu- 

 sions? If they do we must accept them like brave men. "Truth 

 is truth if it sears our eyeballs." But when theories lead to such 

 revolutionary results it behooves us to examine carefully those 

 theories to see if there is not somewhere a fundamental flaw in 

 them. 



One of the most difficult things in the world is to recognize a 

 great truth, to feel its significance and yet not to be carried away 

 by it. Great scientific errors are frequently due not so much to 

 faulty observations as to sweeping conclusions. In biology the 

 search for universal laws is a peculiarly dangerous pursuit. In 

 philosophy great errors are often due not so much to false prem- 

 ises as to supposed logical necessities. As a test of truth logic 

 is inferior to experience ; its faults are not so much in its methods 

 as in its premises and applications. For this reason a logical chain 

 has led many a man into the bondage of error. Truth is not 

 usually found in extremes, in "carrying out a process to its 

 logical conclusions," but rather in some middle course which is 

 less striking but more judicious. 



Having observed that the main characteristics of our minds as 

 well as of our bodies are inherited, it is easy and natural to go fur- 

 ther and to conclude not only that all the possibilities of our 

 lives are marked out in the germ but that all that will actually 

 develop from the germ is there determined and- cannot be altered. 

 There are many similarities between such an extreme view and 

 the old doctrine of preformation, and it contains a like absurdity. 



