Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/42

38 value of their reactions and wants to see the reacting organism adequately sustained. That boldness, swiftness, certainty of manipulation and that precise knowledge which belong to the great surgeon are not due to himself, but were, in their elements, antecedent to him. He could not help his valuable innate qualities, his knowledge is largely a heritage of the past, his education has been possible because of his educability and because of preexisting knowledge. He can not base his claim for a large fee on any virtue for which he is responsible; but only on the ground that society should adequately sustain his obviously "good" organism. Of the question, in what that adequacy consists, society must be the final arbiter.

Thus the recognition of the part that heredity plays in determining human behavior leads us to see more clearly how secondary the individual is to society, leads us to avoid placing "blame" on the bad and fulsome praise on the good, leads us to recognize the true worth and the real limitations of education, religion and other good influences, and leads us to conclude that the greatest advance that humanity can make is to secure an increasing proportion of fit marriages producing the largest number of effective, socially good offspring to carry on the world's work.

So much I wrote last December and sent to the editor; but shortly after there appeared in Science (January 10) the address by Professor Edwin G. Conklin on "Heredity and Responsibility" and the editor suggested that, since Conklin's views and mine were not wholly in accord, that I should discuss our points of difference. Immersion in other work has caused a delay of four or five months.

For the most part Conklin and I are fundamentally in agreement. Certainly no farmer believes that the yield of his crop is predetermined in the seed he plants; nor are reactions controlled solely by one's germinal determiners. The most able artist needs training; but training is vain if there be no capacity whose development is to be cultivated. The importance of training, for the trainable, no one ranks higher than I. Thus I agree heartily with Conklin's statement:

Only I would add: The effect of the experiences and the capacity for forming habits are, to a degree, determined by the hereditary constitution; just as my bantam chicks develop into bantam hens no matter how well I feed them.

But in his discussion of responsibility I am able to detect a difference of opinion between my way of looking at things and Conklin's. When he says it is the duty of society to produce proper environmental