are not impossible to overcome. A third child is desired. Again 
the question arises: Shall this be a boy or a girl ? Let us pre¬ 
sume a boy, for now years have elapsed, the danger zone, by 
careful estimate, is safely passed. And so a boy is born, and he 
looks well and thrives. 
Would it not be a wonderful thing if this could be carried 
out in all cases ? 
What I have told you is a tableau from actual, practical life. 
This, in fact, is the course followed by stock breeders today— 
they determine the sex at will, and they determine the health at 
will! The happy vision I beheld of the human architecture to be 
built upon a sound law of Cross-Transmission, the great human 
potentiality of it, almost overcame me. 
How then, after I had confided my discovery eight years ago 
to Professor Davenport, the man at the apex of the acedemic 
eugenic school in America, could I contemplate the receipt of a 
letter from him that ‘we know nothing about this, therefore we 
cannot go into details ?” 
This reminds me of some logic uttered by Professor Du Bois 
Raymond amidst the hearty applause of the scholars and students 
years ago; he said: 
“1. This and that we do not know. Nor will we ever gain 
a knowledge of it—‘Ignorabimus.’ 
“2. This is the point of view that science maintains at the 
present time. 
“3. Whatever does not agree with this lack of knowledge 
on our part is not scientific/’ 
Grant the first statement and the following must be correct. 
I felt that Professor Davenport’s letter was no fit reply. But 
I have my reply today, truly “fit” and complete, years later, when, 
in statements succinct and clear, he examples facts which are the 
very essence of the phenomena upon which the Dechmann Law 
is based. To the National Academy of Sciences Professor 
Davenport showed records of evidence of maternal transmission 
to the son. He explained that “fighting efficiency is more apt 
to be an inheritance from the maternal side rather than the 
paternal.” Recent experimental research, he stated, to put it in 
form easily understood, “Shows that the daughter of a pirate 
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