CONTROL OF HEREDITY: EUGENICS 443 



character is dominant over weakness. It has 

 been suggested that a normal man who marries 

 a feeble-minded woman would have only nor- 

 mal children, since both genius and feeble- 

 mindedness seem to be recessive when mated 

 with mediocrity or normality. But in all such 

 cases the weakness is not neutralized or re- 

 moved but merely concealed in the offspring 

 and is therefore the more dangerous. If a man 

 chooses to marry a feeble-minded woman he at 

 least does so with his eyes open and he need not 

 be deceived. But the normal and perhaps 

 capable children of such a union carry the taint 

 concealed in their germ plasm and if they 

 should be mated with other normal persons 

 carrying a similar taint some of their children 

 would be feeble-minded, and thus the sins of 

 the parents in mating weakness with strength 

 would be visited upon the children to the nth 

 generation. Such a policy of concealing weak- 

 ness by mating it with strength is wholly com- 

 parable with the custom once prevalent of 

 concealing cases of contagious diseases, and 

 may be properly characterized as the "ostrich 

 policy." 



