102 Heredity and Environment 



walk like his father or mother ; even these acts are not 

 necessarily hereditary at all ; they are the result of 

 environment ; the love and admiration of the child 

 causes him unconsciously to imitate every motion and 

 manner of the loved parent. A child is reared in a 

 slum, surrounded by vice and instigated from day to 

 day towards crime — it may be theft, this being the 

 means by which the family into which he is born sur- 

 vives. Can it be expected that in such surroundings 

 anything else can happen than that the child shall 

 become a member of the criminal classes, with no other 

 possibility but a career of crime ? And yet in regard 

 to these we actually talk of the impossibility of eradi- 

 cating a bad heredity ! It has become axiomatic, and 

 yet it is becoming daily more evident that heredity 

 has nothing to do with it. The State itself is to blame 

 for allowing such an environment to exist, and by its 

 negligence in regard to insanitary conditions, slum 

 dwellings, bad land laws, overcrowding, and la misere, 

 which are all preventable, and which are the potential 

 causes of drink and crime. " Ah," you say, " what 

 about one son in a large family, all brought up in a 

 healthy and good environment, who lapses, succumbs 

 to drink, and ends in crime ? How is it this one failure 

 occurs ? Is this not a reversion to some evil strain in 

 a remote or near ancestor ? " The answer is that it 

 cannot be called the result of heredity ; the parents 

 and the other sons and daughters have lived good lives 

 and done their duty in this world ; this case is excep- 

 tional and can only be treated from the standpoint of 

 disease. We have every right to assume that science 

 will yet demonstrate that in such cases there is impair- 

 ment of some of the higher centres of the brain, prob- 

 ably of the inhibitory nerve cells which control the 

 lower animal instincts, and in such a case we can only 

 conclude we are not dealing with a normal individual. 



