March 5, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



347 



gate. TJie most we can hope for is that 

 through the operation of organic inher- 

 itance, a nervous equipment can be evolved 

 that will enable us to accomplish formal 

 education more effectually and in a briefer 

 time than we do at present, but that the 

 store of facts representing the experience 

 of one individual will ever be transmitted 

 through the germ even in part to another 

 is inconceivable. The future child may re- 

 ceive through the germ increased facility 

 for learning languages, but the words of 

 any particular language can never reach it 

 by this route. They must come to it 

 through the ear or eye, as newly acquired 

 characters, a social inheritance. 



With this distinction of organic and so- 

 cial heredity in mind how must we picture 

 the complete process of reproducing effec- 

 tive members of society. Not by purely 

 educative means which often waste them- 

 selves on attempts at the improvement of 

 an impossible stock, nor by the exclusive 

 control of reproductive processes which 

 seem to be able at most only to prepare the 

 individual to receive his social heritage, 

 but by a mutual operation of both lines of 

 endeavor. I am aware that there are those 

 who believe that all that society needs for 

 steady improvement is a right alteration 

 in the environment and that reproductive 

 irregularities will then adjust themselves 

 to the improved conditions, and I am also 

 aware that there are others who think that 

 the social control of human reproductive 

 activities will lead most quickly to social 

 efficiency and the environmental changes 

 are without permanent significance. The 

 latter view represents that of the animal 

 breeder pure and simple and would be cor- 

 rect for man were it not that he inherits 

 not only as the lower animals do, organ- 

 ically, but also socially. To distinguish in 

 the daily life of a given individual what is 

 organically inherited from what is social 



in origin is very difficult. Has the reformed 

 drunkard become a useful member of soci- 

 ety because of the advice he took or by rea- 

 son of a natural power of resistance re- 

 ceived through the germ? No one can tell, 

 but many in this class assert that the ad- 

 vice, the social inheritance, saved them, and 

 no ultra-eugenist has been able thus far to 

 prove that such may no*, have been the case. 

 With examples of thia kind before us, it 

 seems almost impossible to determine 

 whether in human progress organic or so- 

 cial inheritance is the determining factor. 

 And perhaps such a question is in reality 

 futile. Both factors are surely at work in 

 the world and in the infinite succession of 

 events that go to mould a human being into 

 an effective social organism, now one, now 

 the other, probably predominates. Though 

 we are not in a position to give the exact 

 weight that should be ascribed to each of 

 these two factors, we can be sure that the 

 placing of all the weight on one to the ex- 

 clusion of the other is a mistake. Both 

 factors have shared in the production of 

 effective human beings, and so far as we can 

 see both are likely to continue to participate 

 in this operation. 



To conclude, eugenics in the service of 

 society is, in my opinion, entirely justified 

 in demanding the sterilization by humane 

 methods of those defectives who are in the 

 nature of public wards, and this practise 

 may be extended as experience dictates. 

 Eugenics in its relation to propagating the 

 best in the community has a fundamental 

 position in that it is concerned through the 

 elimination of the extremely unfit with the 

 delivery of a reasonably sound stock for 

 cultivation, but it is only secondarily con- 

 nected with the final production of efficient 

 members of society whose real effectiveness 

 is often more a matter of social inheritance 

 than it is of organic inheritance. 



Haevabd University ^- ^- Parker 



