NURTURE VERSUS NATURE 



new traits have been developed and old traits 

 modified, but these traits, which represent the 

 higher attributes of our mental and moral na- 

 tures, while they have proved dominant to the 

 older barbaric traits, have not been able to elimi- 

 nate the old traits altogether from the germ-plasm 

 of the race. So now and again there appears an 

 individual in which the recessive traits are patent ; 

 and it merely evidences the force of the laws of 

 Mendelian heredity with which we have become 

 familiar to note that these recessive individuals 

 breed true to their recessive quality of mental and 

 moral deficiency. 



Theoretically, we should expect that when two 

 of these recessives are mated, their offspring 

 would be recessives. 



And the observations of the alienists and crim- 

 inologists in recent years prove the correctness 

 of the preconception. When two mental defec- 

 tives are mated, their offspring are all defectives. 

 Of course we can momentarily submerge the de- 

 fective strain by mating the recessive individual 

 with a normal individual. But the progeny all 

 carry, submerged in their germ-plasm, the re- 

 cessive factors. Even though themselves out- 

 wardly normal, they represent tainted stock, and 

 the taint will make itself manifest sooner or later 

 in their progeny. 1 



1 The question may arise as why genius may also act as a 

 recessive trait, as previously pointed out. The answer is that 

 the type of genius that may so operate in heredity is the unstable 

 of ill-balanced type allied to insanity, and owing its success largely 



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