122 Heredity and Environment 



Sir John Macdonell's remarks on the report of Mr. 

 Van Wagenen on the results of the law authorising or 

 requiring sterilisation of certain classes of defectives, 

 degenerates, and criminals in eight of the States of the 

 American Union were of the greatest importance, and 

 ought to arrest the attention of all students of sociology. 

 He protested against the habitual or even the confirmed 

 criminal being treated in this manner. The criminal, 

 he said, was really a by-product of the slums or other 

 forms of poverty, and there was no warrant for the 

 theory that he was the victim of certain mental or 

 physical defects which he could transmit to his progeny. 

 The criminal had in him the potentiality of good things. 



Professor Smith, of Minnesota University, voiced the 

 true scientific attitude in regard to heredity and en- 

 vironment by his striking assertion that he would 

 prefer to have as father a robust burglar rather than 

 a consumptive bishop, though he should be glad to be 

 adopted into another family very soon after birth. With 

 a proper environment, consumption would soon cease to 

 be thought of from the hereditary standpoint. In the 

 past it was the compulsory environment of the tubercle 

 bacillus which created the widespread belief in the 

 heredity of phthisis. In all probability he would be as 

 well off as the son of a consumptive bishop if he were 

 at once adopted into a healthy family after his birth. 

 It is quite as necessary to remove him from the con- 

 sumptive bishop from the physical point of view as 

 to separate him from the immoral influence of the 

 burglar parent from the ethical standpoint. But the 

 statement, as a whole, is an emphatic vindication of 

 the view advanced for the physical, intellectual, and 

 ethical evolution of Man — the progressive ultimate 

 achievement of a perfect environment, and of the ex- 

 ploded influence of the "dead hand" of heredity, which 

 is void of influence except in so far as it perpetuates 



