Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/93

 SANITATION AND SOCIOLOGY 79

very inadequate recognition is given to the real relation between social and sanitary conditions. An instance may be cited from a well-known work on the causes and remedy of crime, in which it is stated that the only simple and absolutely final division of the active causes of crime is into the two main heads heredity and environment, and yet, in a detailed study of the latter head, sanitary conditions are not even specified or discussed.

Cases are not lacking to prove that some phases of mediaeval theology are not extinct in the present age, even among persons who pride themselves upon their advanced and progressive views on social themes. A few years ago a ward committee of the associated charities organization in a large city made a careful sanitary inspection and survey of a portion of the district under their charge which presented problems of unusual difficulty. An interested observer commended the work in speaking to a mem- ber of the committee, saying that it was only by the study and knowledge of fundamental facts and principles that any perma- nent good could be accomplished and among these the physical environment must certainly be counted. The reply was made that "after all, the sanitary conditions did not mean much if the people were born to be bad they would be bad in spite of their physical surroundings." Such a view of the predestination of man upon earth is by no means uncommon and yet, if it were true, all endeavor in every realm of body, mind or morals would be practically fruitless.

But even when the connection between physical conditions and mental and moral manifestations is recognized, there is a tendency to make it abstract, to bury it in obscure terms, to rele- gate it to the battlefield of biological strife. Heredity, the transmission of acquired traits, the variation of species, and simi- lar phrases are used to conjure with, until the seeker for an opportunity to increase the sum of human welfare begins to think that the only chance for usefulness lay in prehistoric ages rather than in the living present and with primeval man rather than with his suffering brother and neighbor.

A more rational and practical view, however, is gaining