36 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION 



of the work of Mendel, and the application of his 

 methods by other naturalists. 



It will be well, then, to begin our consideration of 

 inheritance in mankind by tracing the progress which 

 has been made in the discovery of Mendelian factors in 

 the human race. Afterwards we will pass to more 

 general cases, where Mendel's principles either do not 

 hold, or are too difficult to follow through the maze of 

 phenomena for us yet to have established their presence. 



Although we take this course, it must not be sup- 

 posed that the sociological conclusions we draw from 

 our general study of heredity in man depend on the 

 new knowledge associated with the name of Mendel. 

 Mendel's theories give us a working hypothesis which 

 tells us what to look for in examining new data. Hence 

 it is well to put those theories in the forefront. But, 

 however we interpret them, the facts of heredity remain, 

 and must be reckoned with by the sociologist and the 

 statesman. 



The success of Mendelian methods depends on our 

 ability to isolate certain characters and treat the inherit- 

 ance of each character as a separate problem. Now, 

 many of the qualities in mankind which we are 

 accustomed to think of as definite simple characters are 

 in reality extremely complex. It needs the conjunction 

 of many different factors to make an able man, a 

 charming woman, an effective politician, or an accom- 

 plished swindler. 



We must begin, then, with some simpler and more 

 definite character, in the hope that it will depend on 

 one Mendelian factor alone. 



