466 HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 



be admonished or punished, for they do only 

 what their natures lead them to do ; the nature 

 of the child must be respected and must be 

 allowed to manifest itself in its own way. Ly- 

 ing and stealing will cure themselves like the 

 mumps, or they will remain incurable, in which 

 case the germ plasm is to blame and nothing 

 could have been done anyway. Laziness is due 

 to inheritance or to hookworms ; the latter kind 

 may be cured, but not the former. Thriftless- 

 ness, alcoholism and uncleanness run in fami- 

 lies and can be cured only by extermination. 

 Men who prey upon society were born with 

 wolfish instincts, and cannot help but eat the 

 lambs. Villains, lawbreakers, murderers 

 should be pitied but not punished; if blame 

 attaches to their deeds it falls upon the mar- 

 riage bureau and the parents. The world 

 needs hospitals and sanatoria and sterilization 

 institutes for the criminal and the vicious, but 

 not courts and prisons, and all punishments 

 should be visited only upon the parents to the 

 third and fourth generations. 



Do our studies of heredity lead us to any 

 such radical conclusions? If they do we must 



