Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/274

270 ease of childhood, death for one cause or another intervening in, the majority of instances long before the age of the natural expectation of life is reached. When we consider this universally admitted fact, it becomes apparent that at least one of the aforesaid explanations must be wrong. For, if children of Jewish parents survive in such disproportionately large numbers as to account for the seeming excess of feeble-mindedness, it naturally follows that this survival must offset the diminished birth-rate and serve to maintain the normal relation between child and adult population.

If the difference in the relation of adult to child population really exists in a sufficient degree to be a factor at all in the explanation of the degree of prevalence of insanity and feeble-mindedness, the logical argument would be as follows:

1. The proportion of Jewish adults to the general population is greater than among others, consequently the proportion of the child population is less.

2. Feeble-mindedness is a disease of childhood.

3. Conclusion: Being fewer Jewish children there are fewer feeblem-inded among Jews than among others.

If we reverse the argument and assume the premise that more Jewish children survive than among others we should have the following syllogism:

1. The proportion of Jewish children to the general population is greater than among others, consequently the proportion of the adult population is less.

2. Insanity is a disease of adults.

3. Conclusion: Being fewer Jewish adults there are fewer Jewish insane.

A consideration of the foregoing examples of reductio ad absurdum only serves to confirm the belief that, after all, there must be some intimate relation existing between the racial, or inherent ethnic characteristics of the Jews and the greater prevalence of insanity and feeble-mindedness among them. In no instances shall we find any reliable data that show the proportion of feeble-minded and insane among the Jews to be less than among the general population; in most countries it is undeniably larger, and in every instance the number of Jews suffering from mental defects are recruited from the ranks of the congenitally inferior in a far greater proportion than is the case among the non-Jews.

In the light of our knowledge of the laws of heredity, there can be but one thing responsible for the above-described condition. It must necessarily have been brought about by too close inbreeding.

That the excessive number of constitutional inferior insanities has a partial explanation in the fact that long centuries of inbreeding have