CONTROL OP HEREDITY: EUGENICS 441 



that the children of given parents will inherit 

 more or less than average intellectual capacity, 

 but since germinal potentiality is transformed 

 into intellectual ability only as the result of 

 development such a prediction could not be 

 extended to the latter unless the environment 

 as well as the heredity were known. 



Mankind is such a mongrel race, good and 

 bad qualities are so mixed in us, marriage is 

 such a lottery, the distribution of the germinal 

 units to the different germ cells and the union 

 of particular germ cells in fertilization is so 

 wholly a matter of chance, the influence of even 

 bad hereditary units on one another is so un- 

 predictably good or bad as is shown in many 

 hybrids, even the minor influences of environ- 

 ment and education which escape attention are 

 so potent in development, that the chances 

 were infinity to one against any one of us, with 

 all his individual characteristics, ever coming 

 into existence. If the Greeks or Romans had 

 known of the real infinity of chances through 

 which every human being is brought to the 

 light of day not only would they have deified 

 Chance but they would have made her the 

 mother of gods and men. 



