260 HEREDITY IN RELATION TO EUGENICS 



4. The Salvation of the Race through Heredity 

 Heredity is often regarded as a terrible fact; that we suffer 

 limitations because of the composition of our germ plasm is 

 a blow to pride and ambition. But, on the other hand, 

 with hmitation in capacity goes Umitation in responsibility> 

 ^ Those who held the hazy doctrine of freedom of the will must 

 have postulated uniformity of capacity for discriminating 

 between right and wrong and uniformity in responsiveness to 

 similar stimuU. Of course such an assumption is false. How 

 we respond to any stimulus depends on the nature of our 

 protoplasm. The nature of the response may be modified by 

 training, by the formation of habits; but the result of train- 

 ing is, within hmits, determined by the impressibility of the 

 protoplasm. So I do not condemn my neighbor however 

 regrettable or dangerous he may be. 



And while heredity limits capacity in one point it ex- 

 tends it in others. If I have mental hmitations, I have also 

 gifts of natural health, of physical vigor, of persistence^ and 

 so on. Thus, as there is hardly a strain of human germ 

 plasm that is without some defect or limitation so there is 

 hardly a strain without the determiner of some admirable 

 characteristic. While education and moral and religious in- 

 struction may do much to develop one's native traits, he- 

 redity can introduce the desirable determiner that will make 

 such training more useful or less necessary. Indeed, while 

 by good conditions we help the individual to make the most 

 of himself, by good breeding we establish a permanent strain y^ 

 that is strong in its very constitution. The experience of 

 animal and plant breeders who have been able by appro- 

 priate crosses to increase the vigor and productivity of their 

 stock and crops should lead us to see that proper matings are 

 the greatest means of permanently improving the human 

 race — of saving it from imbecility, poverty, disease and im- 

 moraUty- 



