Conclusions 87 



no records at all, or quite inadequate ones are kept, it seems 

 almost unnecessary to suggest that it would be to their own 

 advantage, if instead of vague statements with regard to the 

 probable efficiency of most of their children, they could pro- 

 duce full and adequate records wherewith to meet the criticisms 

 at present being hurled at the whole system of which they 

 themselves form a part. 1 



To refer now to the second criticism, viz., that the vicious 

 characters will inevitably reappear in a later generation. Even 

 if this could be proved to our satisfaction, is it easy to conceive 

 the extent to which a community will have benefited, which 

 has raised but one generation of respectable and efficient men 

 and women, from a generation of paupers and degenerates ? 

 Let us admit the possibility of the so-called hereditary taint 

 reappearing in certain cases in the third generation, and then 

 try to realise the difference which that intervening race of 

 relatively efficient men and women will have made in the whole 

 outlook and environment of these possible victims of Heredity 

 the children of the third generation. 



If the parent and environment of the child of the second 

 generation were equally bad, so for the child of the third 

 generation will they be good. In the first case the parent 

 was probably himself the outcome of his environment and not 

 its cause, in the second he has to a great extent created it. 

 In the one case the undesirable characters in the child were 

 stimulated and suggested by its environment ; in the other, 

 stimulus and suggestion will alike be missing. 



And if in the face of an unsympathetic environment the 

 " hereditary taint " still continues to persist, let us again step 

 in and rescue the child of the fourth generation from the 

 inevitable disadvantages which such a persistence will create. 



Such a policy is full of hope. For let us recall the 

 biological conclusions of Professor Thomson : " variations, 



1 As an example of a satisfactory system of " after care," see Appendix C. (Rules 

 for District Visitors of the Association for Befriending Boys.) 



