CRIMINAL TAINT HEREDITARY 295 
It must not be supposed that the writer is a special 
advocate of all or any of the suggestions which have 
been mentioned above. They are only alluded to in 
order to indicate the directions in which the problem 
of race-improvement may be attacked. 
The point of view which has been adopted in the 
present chapter is very well summed up in the following 
paragraph from a paper by Prof. Karl Pearson : 
“As we have found conscientiousness is inherited, 
so I have little doubt that the criminal tendency 
descends in stocks. To-day we feed our criminals up, 
and we feed up the insane; we let both out of the 
prison or the asylum “‘ reformed ” or “ cured,” as the 
case may be, only after a few months to return to 
State supervision, leaving behind them the germs of 
a new generation of deteriorants. The average number 
of crimes due to the convicts in His Majesty’s prisons 
to-day is ten apiece. We cannot reform the criminal 
nor cure the insane from the standpoint of heredity ; 
the taint varies not with their moral or mental conduct. 
These are the products of the somatic cells ; the disease 
lies deeper in their germinal constitution. Education 
for the criminal, fresh air for the tuberculous, rest and 
food for the neurotic—these are excellent. They may 
bring control, sound lungs, and sanity to the individual; 
but they will not save the offspring from the need of 
like treatment, nor from the danger of collapse, when 
the time comes. They cannot make a nation sound in 
mind and body ; they merely screen degeneracy behind 
a throng of arrested degenerates. Our highly developed 
human sympathy will no longer allow us to watch 
