34 THE TREND OF THE RACE 



belonged to an ''unintelligent family"; of another, that he was 

 "a good workman, but very alcoholic," besides being "round- 

 shouldered, narrow-chested, and in poor physical condition"; of 

 another, that he was "a wild fellow," who broke into a house with 

 intent to rape; of another, that he was "a shiftless drinking fel- 

 low"; who later got into trouble for assaulting an officer; of 

 another, that she was "shiftless and neurotic" and married a 

 "shiftless and alcoholic man." When such persons are put down 

 as feeble-minded our confidence in the proper classification of the 

 matings becomes rudely shaken. The authors seem to consider 

 shiftlessness as almost tantamount to feeble-mindedness, and if 

 this is combined with alcoholism or sexual irregularity the judg- 

 ment of the mental condition of the offender is apt to be particu- 

 larly harsh. Estimates made after a "brief acquaintance," or 

 from "descriptions of others," etc., when we are attempting to 

 gauge the innate ability of people of little education, raised in a 

 very unfavorable environment, and often with a constitution 

 impaired by the use of alcohol, are very apt to be biased. One 

 cannot take seriously conclusions based on evidence of this sort. 

 It is of course not improbable a priori that feeble-mindedness may 

 rest upon different forms of hereditary defect in different individ- 

 uals. But that offspring of normal mentality may be produced 

 from two parents who are hereditarily feeble-minded cannot be 

 considered as established, I think, by the data of Danielson and 

 Davenport's memoir.^ 



Notwithstanding the striking results obtained by Goddard the 

 complete dominance of normal mentality over feeble-mindedness 

 cannot be regarded as clearly established. In a very large number 

 of cases in which characters obey the Mendelian rules of segrega- 

 tion the organisms which are heterozygous for the characters in 

 question show a more or less intermediate condition. Frequently, 

 as in the dominance of polydactylism, there is a large degree of 

 variation in the extent to which the dominant character is devel- 



^ Dr. Tredgold who has carefully traced many pedigrees of feeble-minded families 

 states that his experience bears out the conclusion "that the mating of two mentally 

 defective individuals yields offspring who are all defective." 



