104 Heredity and Environment 



bers who took part in the discussion agreed with the 

 view which we have given. It was very well put by Dr. 

 A. T. Schofield, who said he rose " to emphasize the 

 statement of Dr. Konig.that of all hereditary tendencies 

 that of alcohol was the most subject to the forces of 

 environment. They must remember that the public 

 followed with the keenest interest their remarks on this 

 subject. They long to be delivered from the dead 

 hand of heredity, and so eagerly did they welcome 

 any door of hope that he noticed last year when 

 one speaker pointed out that, after all, what was in- 

 herited was merely a tendency which could be re- 

 sisted and overcome, and therefore there was no need 

 for fatalism, that statement was copied into most 

 English papers. He therefore was very glad to em- 

 phasize Dr. Konig's statement that inherited alcoholism 

 followed the law of Herbert Spencer, that a man was 

 more like the company he kept than that from which he 

 was descended. But this force of environment applied 

 not only to alcohol, it applied to crime. Those who 

 knew anything of Mrs. Meredith's work at Addlestone 

 (now carried on by Miss Lloyd) would bear him out 

 that children in these village homes were taken from 

 their mothers with four generations of hereditary crime, 

 and that these children were so acted on by their per- 

 fect environment that those tendencies which became 

 criminal in their parents were directed into good 

 channels, so that they grew up into good, honest, and 

 moral men and women. This led him to mention one 

 more point of hope in which he believed all present 

 would agree, and that was, that what was inherited 

 was not ' vices,' or ' virtues,' or even ' diseases,' 

 but ' tendencies,' which by bad training and sur- 

 roundings could be degraded into vices or diseases, or 

 by good could be elevated into virtues or health." 

 And we are glad to be able to call to the support of 



