238 INBREEDING AND OUTBREEDINa 



men of all time. He was hardly justified in this. Men- 

 tality was then the order of the day in Attica. Accom- 

 plishment was appreciated. Minds of high order were 

 drawn from surrounding countries. The great poet, 

 strange as it may seem, was valued more highly than 

 the wealthy merchant. Such conditions must account for 

 much of this apparent racial superiority. Further, there 

 can be little question but that in this little settlement there 

 was much selective breeding. Had we the data, would we 

 not find the Athenians all more or less related to one 

 another? Had they not built up somewhat of a super- 

 stock by inbreeding? Endogamy was their custom (West- 

 ermarck, 1901). Marriage with half-sisters was allowable, 

 and if an Athenian lived as husband or wife with an 

 alien, he or she was liable to be sold as a slave and have all 

 property confiscated. Such inbreeding, given the posses- 

 sion of desirable characteristics on which to base selection, 

 could hardly fail to bring results. 



In a sense this is the obverse of the picture ; the reverse 

 is not as pleasing. Dreary histories have been written of 

 consistently degenerate families, families with such a 

 monotonously infamous record they are known through- 

 out the world. There are the Jukes,^^ an inbred family 

 whose record of pauperism, prostitution and crime has 

 been traced for six generations. There is the *' Tribe of 

 Ishmael/' a race of indigent vagrants since 1790, con- 

 sistent in their wavs of life no matter what their sur- 

 roundings.^^2 There is the Nam family, descendants of a 

 racial mixture, Indian-white, less uniform than the first 

 two in their anti-social traits, but characterized on the 

 whole by vagabondage, stupidity and lack of ambition.^^ 

 There is the family of which Poellman recorded 709 life- 



