mply means to hark back
to the level of our animal ancestors, without regaining their power to
guide life. The animal is provided with a bundle of instincts which
tell him what to do in all the ordinary emergencies of life. The
human species, in its development, has lost a large portion of its
instincts, and has gained, instead, the power of intelligent choice
and the ability to learn by imitation. When these drop away, man
without his instincts or his intelligence is more helpless than the
brute. Students of sociology are making clear to us that a large
portion of the criminality of the world, much of the looseness of
life, and a large part of the alcoholic excesses are due to this taint
of feeble-mindedness. Recent investigations have made it clear that
one feeble-minded family in a community may, in the course of years,
poison the life of an entire state. The Jukes family in New York, the
Kallikak family in New Jersey, have shown the awful possibilities of
descent from a single feeble-minded ancestor. Prisons, almshouses, and
houses of shame owe their population in no small degree to this bitter
curse. It will not be long before society will learn to protect itself
against such poisoning of the human stock. Nothing is more clear to
the investigator of this subject than that the one overwhelming cause
for feeble-mindedness is feeble-mindedness in the parentage.

There is one type of mental weakling, known as the Mongolian idiot,
which may arise right out of the heart of an apparently sound family.
But the number of these is comparatively small. The number of
feeble-minded, who are feeble-minded because of their heredity, is
dishearteningly and astonishingly large. Every attempt to examine
large numbers of school children shows a sickening proportion of those
who are distinctly feeble. Every little community seems to have its
boy or girl who is what is known as silly. Such people rarely live
long lives without leaving behind them feeble-minded children, no
small proportion of whom are likely to be illegitimate. Against this
fouling of the stream at its source, society must protect itself.
Legislators revolt at the somewhat inhuman but certainly safe method
of surgically preventing the possibility of the feeble-minded becoming
parents. It would be more creditable and just as effective if society
would take upon itself the tremendously expensive task of caring for
all its feeble-minded in institutions during their entire