38 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



value of their reactions and wants to see the reacting organism ade- 

 quately sustained. That boldness, swiftness, certainty of manipulation 

 and that precise knowledge which belong to the great surgeon are not 

 due to himself, but were, in their elements, antecedent to him. He could 

 not help his valuable innate qualities, his knowledge is largely a heritage 

 of the past, his education has been possible because of his educability 

 and because of preexisting knowledge. He can not base his claim for 

 a large fee on any virtue for which he is responsible; but only on the 

 ground that society should adequately sustain his obviously " good " 

 organism. Of the question, in what that adequacy consists, society 

 must be the final arbiter. 



Thus the recognition of the part that heredity plays in determining 

 human behavior leads us to see more clearly how secondary the indi- 

 vidual is to society, leads us to avoid placing " blame " on the bad and 

 fulsome praise on the good, leads us to recognize the true worth and the 

 real limitations of education, religion and other good influences, and 

 leads us to conclude that the greatest advance that humanity can make 

 is to secure an increasing proportion of fit marriages producing the 

 largest number of effective, socially good offspring to carry on the 

 world's work. 



So much I wrote last December and sent to the editor; but shortly 

 after there appeared in Science (January 10) the address by Professor 

 Edwin G-. Conklin on " Heredity and Eesponsibility " and the editor 

 suggested that, since Conklin's views and mine were not wholly in 

 accord, that I should discuss our points of difference. Immersion in 

 other work has caused a delay of four or five months. 



For the most part Conklin and I are fundamentally in agreement. 

 Certainly no farmer believes that the yield of his crop is predetermined 

 in the seed he plants; nor are reactions controlled solely by one's germ- 

 inal determiners. The most able artist needs training; but training is 

 vain if there be no capacity whose development is to be cultivated. The 

 importance of training, for the trainable, no one ranks higher than I. 

 Thus I agree heartily with Conklin's statement: 



The factors which determine behavior are not merely the present stimulus 

 and the hereditary constitution, but also the experiences through which the 

 organism has passed and the habits it has formed. 



Only I would add : The effect of the experiences and the capacity for 

 forming habits are, to a degree, determined by the hereditary constitu- 

 tion; just as my bantam chicks develop into bantam hens no matter 

 how well I feed them. 



But in his discussion of responsibility I am able to detect a differ- 

 ence of opinion between my way of looking at things and Conklin's. 

 When he says it is the duty of society to produce proper environmental 



