EUGENICS AND EUTHENICS 253 



insanity, the onset of the symptoms may be delayed by very 

 favorable conditions of hfe. But though such symptoms 

 may be diminished and the patient be discharged from the 

 hospital as ''cured," yet the weakness in his germ plasm is 

 not removed aixd it will, unless he be fitly mated, show itself 

 in his children when they, in turn, experience an unusual 

 stress. Even the fugue tendency of the child of three years 

 (page 89) might not have expressed itself so acutely had 

 he lived in the country with freedom to wander widely at 

 will instead of being restrained within the confines of city 

 houses and narrow streets. In extreme cases, however, of 

 which complete albinism is an example, the trait seems to be 

 due to the entire absence in both of the united germ cells of 

 any determiner for the character. Under these circumstan- 

 ces not even the best of environmental conditions can bring 

 about pigmentation. Albinism is a protoplasmic ''accident " 

 as independent of environment as drowning by the over- 

 turning of an ocean steamship is independent of heredity. 

 With few exceptions, the principle that the biological and 

 pathological history of a child is determined both by the 

 nature of the environment and the nature of the protoplasm 

 may be applied generally. It is an incomplete statement 

 that the tubercle bacillus is the cause of tuberculosis or al- 

 cohol the cause of deUrium tremens or syphilis the cause of 

 paresis. Experience proves it, for not all that harbor the 

 tubercle bacillus show the dread symptoms of tuberculosis 

 (else there were little hope of escape for any of us) ; nor do all 

 drunkards have delirium tremens, nor are all who are infected 

 by syphiUs paretic, else our hospitals for the insane would be 

 fuller than they are. Rather, each of these diseases is the 

 specific reaction of the organism to the specific poison. In 

 general, the causes of disease as given in the pathologies are 

 not the real causes. They are due to inciting conditions act- 

 ing on a susceptible protoplasm. The real cause of death of 



