844 CTVIC BIOLOGY 



excess in the use of coffee or tea must be viewed with 

 suspicion, and many of our best hygienists look with appre- 

 liension at the possible consequences to the race of our 

 sudden, enormously increased gorging of sugar. We can 

 onlv suggest these as possible lines of study. 



Eugenics and MendePs law ; bad blood and good. '' I*eo- 

 ple say one mnst be able to read and write in order to get 



along in the world. Now there is ]\Iiss . She cannot 



read or write, yet she gets along all riglit." ^ 



This judgment of a feeble-minded woman by an imbecile man 

 helps to explain the rapid increase of such defectives. Avoided 

 by the normal, defectives generally marry defectives. 8inc(^ 

 they are permitted to nmltiply at will and are shielded by 

 modern charity from operation of the law of survival of the fit, 

 this process has gone on until w^e now have nearly 3,000,000 

 dependents and defectives — one in thirty of our population.'^ 

 By far the larger part (quite possibly, when we have studied 

 to the real genetic root of the matter, we shall find that al- 

 most all) of the heavy burdens imposed upon society by the 

 idiotic, imbecile, and insane, the paupers, alcoholics, and 

 criminals, is caused bv inherited mental and moral defect. 



The exhaustive studies of Goddard seem to leave no room 

 for doubt that feeble-mindedness is a recessive, ^lendelian, 

 unit character. Hence, according to ^lendel's law, the chil- 

 dren of feeble-minded parents must forever <tU l>e feeble- 

 minded. Goddard finds this to V)e true. Normal-mindedness 

 is a dominant unit character. Hence, if one parent is pure 

 normal (duplex) and the other feeble-minded (nulliplex), the 

 cliildren will appear normal but will all have feeble-mindedness 

 recessive (that is, be simplex). When such people become 

 parents, the children will be IDD -f 2DR 4- IRR. that is, 

 three normal to outward appearance and one feeble-mmded. 



1 Goddard, Feeble-mindedness : its Causes and Consequences, p. 8r>. 

 - Kellicott. Social Direction of Human Evolution, p. 34. 



