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or otherwisely undesirable parents were herded together on an 
Island inhabited by a pious, but somewhat slow population of 
fisherman's families. The anonymous author, who relates tlie 
Störy seems to confound schoolchildren with germs, and from the 
fact that these hordes of illguarded children remained as tbey 
were in their native slums^ he concludes that the experiment 
shows that even an ideal environment can not affeet a morally 
defective born child. Other people there are, who want to know 
nothing about inheritance, and who believe that the non-genetic 
factors count for so much that a permanent amelioration of the 
environment is all that in the future will be found necessary. 
Personally I am not much more inclined one way or the other. 
The subject is essentially one of study rather than of opinion. 
I fear that the greatest danger which threatens a sane and sober 
study of eugenics will be that enterprising politicians will accen- 
tuate the difference between the two opinions as to the course 
to follow, and will ruin the prospeet of the necessary public 
endowment of the study by taking either the „breeding-principle" 
or the „ amelioration- of-environment-principle" as planks in their 
political platforms. 
