290 Heredity and Environment 



either instinct or reason acts alone. More need not be said on 

 this subject, since it is treated ad infinitum in works of fiction and 

 in ladies' journals. 



4. Contributory Eugenical Measures. General Education. — In 

 addition to these negative and positive eugenical measures 

 many conditions may be classed as contributory to eugen- 

 ics. One of the most important of all contributory measures 

 is the general education of the people regarding heredity. The 

 wide-spread ignorance on this subject is profound and very many 

 offenders against the principles of good breeding have sinned 

 through ignorance. Any general reform must rest upon enlight- 

 ened public opinion, and the schools, the churches and the press 

 can do no more important work for mankind than to educate the 

 people, after they have been educated themselves, on this impor- 

 tant matter. 



Society too may cultivate a proper pride in good inheritance. 

 Much of value would be accomplished if the silly pride in ances- 

 tral wealth or position or environment which touched our fore- 

 bears only superficially and never entered into their germ plasm, 

 or the still sillier claims of long descent, in which we are all 

 equal, could be replaced by a proper pride in ancestral heredity, 

 a pride in those inherited qualities of body, mind and character 

 which have made some families illustrious. A proper pride in 

 heredity would do much to insure the perpetuation of a line and 

 to protect it from admixture with baser blood. 



Coeducation versus Monasticism- — Among other contributory 

 measures which serve to promote good breeding among men must 

 be reckoned coeducation, as well as other means of promoting 

 good and early marriages. The president of a large coeducational 

 institution once said that if marriages were made in heaven he was 

 sure that the Lord had a branch office in his university. I had 

 occasion a few years ago to investigate the eugenical record of 

 a coeducational institution, which is not unknown in the world 

 of scholarship, and I found that about 33 per cent of the recent 

 graduates had married fellow students, that there had been no 





