266 HEREDITY IN RELATION TO EUGENICS 



formal ''good influences" that society has organized. Now, 

 what I do depends on what I am, on the one hand, and the 

 nature of the stimuh I receive, on the other, and neither what 

 I am nor the nature of the stimuh I receive can be an excuse 

 for adding more than is necessary to society's welfare to the 

 sum of the world's pain. But organized society, on the con- 

 trary, has a responsibility towards its members in the sense 

 of a duty to perform under penalty of dire consequences that 

 will follow automatically. That responsibiUty involves, first, 

 preventing the mating that brings together the antisocial 

 traits of the criminal; second, after this damage is done, in 

 securing the highest development of the good traits and the 

 inhibition of the bad, surrounding the weak protoplasm with 

 the best stimuli and protecting it from harmful stimuli. Here 

 is where society must act to cut off the evil suggestions of 

 immoral theaters, yellow journals and other bad literature. 

 These stimulate those who react violently to this kind of 

 suggestion. "The prisoner was a paranoiac and had a de- 

 lusion of persecution; but had the play at the theater not 

 been what it was he would not have murdered that night." 



