36 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



anything, but when depressed a sense of helplessness overpowers him. 

 Again, one person is original and independent while another is always 

 imitative. Here is a famous lecturer who has quelled mobs with his 

 eloquence but who is prevailingly diffident ; while there is a woman who 

 has lived always in the backwoods and is as forward as a Canada Jay. 

 Sincerity or insincerity, generosity or stinginess, gregariousness or 

 seclusiveness, truthfulness or untruthfulness, are all qualities whose 

 presence or absence is determined largely by the factor of heredity. 

 The way a person reacts to a given stimulation is, thus, determined by 

 the germinal determinants that have fallen to his lot and the training 

 and experience that have favored or repressed the complete development 

 and fruition of such determiners. The self-control which he realizes 

 he is exercising at any moment is a part of his involuntary reaction. 

 And the individual can no more alter his reaction than he can pull 

 himself up by his boot-straps. 



How opposed is the conclusion, to which we seem logically forced, to 

 the theory of organized society as carried out in its laws and in its 

 treatment of persons. Here are two men, one whose reactions are all 

 social; the other whose reactions are prevailingly antisocial. The first 

 we praise, we heap with honors, we supply with the good things of life. 

 The other we condemn, we hold him culpable, we confine him to a cell 

 seven feet by four with little air and less daylight, and we feed him with 

 the poorest food. "We are rewarding the one and " punishing " the 

 other. Yet each has turned out the necessary product of his own 

 organism under the conditions in which it has developed. Neither 

 exercised any selection of the elementary constitution of his organism, 

 which was decided at the time the two germ cells united; neither had 

 any control over the conditions of early development of the determiners, 

 over his early education and the development of the germs, if any, of 

 inhibitions. If the reactions of the organism are socially " good," for- 

 tunate that person ; if he " elects " to study hard and prolong his educa- 

 tion he does so because of a liking or ambition for which he is in no 

 way responsible. Society does well to care for the good organism, to 

 preserve it from overwork, from accident, from corroding influences. 

 If, on the other hand, the reactions of the organism are socially " bad," 

 unfortunate that person; if he "selects" bad companions and runs 

 away from school, his reaction is in such case a necessary consequence 

 of his make up. Society does well to restrict the product of the bad 

 organism, protect society from it, or, if it seems best, to send it to the 

 scrap heap. No doubt there are persons who are trainable, but have not 

 had their inhibitions cultivated. It is sometimes possible to develop 

 these dormant germs even relatively late in life. The infliction of pain 

 is occasionally of educative value even in youth at the age of puberty. 

 In other words punishment for crime may have, in some cases, a deter- 



