LUTHER BURBANK 



advantageous to its possessor or at all events 

 not detrimental or it is quickly eliminated, be- 

 cause there is no such thing as the carrying for- 

 ward of this character as a latent element in the 

 germ-plasm. But the old and therefore recessive 

 character may be carried forward in the germ- 

 plasm generation after generation, for the very 

 reason that it is not outwardly manifested, and 

 therefore does not handicap the individual in 

 whose germ-plasm it rests. 



Now we have seen that certain notable defects 

 of the human organism, which are manifested in 

 mental deficiency or insanity, act as recessive 

 traits in inheritance. The same thing is true of 

 the allied defects that are the foundation of crimi- 

 nality. We are led to infer, then, that these con- 

 ditions of mental and moral obliquity represent 

 earlier stages of human evolution. The individ- 

 uals who manifest these defects in any given gen- 

 eration are those whose ancestors have mated in 

 such an unfortunate way as to preserve the re- 

 cessive character either as a patent or a latent 

 factor in their germ-plasm. In effect, the men- 

 tally and morally deficient classes of to-day be- 

 long to a remote generation of the past. The 

 hereditary factors that are responsible for their 

 mental equipment have come down unchanged 

 from remote ancestors who lived under conditions 

 of barbarism in which the traits that we now de- 

 scribe as aberrant or defective were a part of the 

 normal equipment of the race. 



In the long stretch of intervening generations, 

 [316] 



