94 DARWINISM AND RACE PROGRESS. 



Intermarriage does not stamp out Criminal Tendencies. 



It might, perhaps, then- be said that intermarriage 

 and dispersion of the criminal taint is, indeed, the 

 most ready way of getting rid of it. But this cannot 

 be so, for it is more reasonable to suppose that al- 

 though by intermarriage the intensity of the criminal 

 tendency may be diminished, yet for the same reason 

 individuals with this innate tendency will be all the 

 more increased, and that the further intermarriage of 

 these individuals with others having similar taints of 

 character, may at any time tend to again reproduce 

 the inveterate criminal in perpetual recurrence. We 

 may dilute ink with water so that we can no longer 

 see that it is black, but we dare not draw the infer- 

 ence that the ink has been destroyed. It is equally 

 as impossible to believe that the criminal taint can 

 disappear unless the criminals are prevented alto- 

 gether from adding their progeny to those of the rest 

 of society. 



It might be urged that in the case of the family of 

 the Jukes their crime was due to imitations of bad 

 habits kept up in the isolated district in which they 

 lived. It must be at once granted that much of their 

 crime and pauperism was no doubt due to bad up- 

 bringing, and the polluted moral atmosphere in which 

 they lived; nevertheless, we are justified in believing in 

 the existence of such a thing as innate want of moral 



