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. Ina 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- 
Ip, 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.” 
