Page:Little Essays of Love and Virtue (1922).djvu/149

 seem to us our finest human stocks, physically, morally, and intellectually, it is our wisest course just to leave them alone as much as we can. The best stocks will probably be also those best able to help themselves and in so doing to help others. But that is obviously not so as regards the worst stocks. It is, therefore, fortunate that the aim here seems a little clearer. There are still many abnormal conditions of which we cannot say positively that they are injurious to the race and that we should therefore seek to breed them out. But there are other conditions so obviously of evil import alike to the subjects themselves and to their descendants that we cannot have any reasonable doubt about them. There is, for instance, epilepsy, which is known to be transformed by heredity into various abnormalities dangerous alike to their possessors and to society. There are also the pronounced degrees of feeble-mindedness, which are definitely heritable and not only condemn those who reveal them to a permanent inaptitude for full life, but constitute a subtle poison working through the social atmosphere in all directions and lowering the level of civilisation in the community. Nowhere has this been so thoroughly studied and so clearly proved as in the United States. It is only necessary to mention Dr. C. B. Davenport of the Department of Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor (New York) who has carried on