elf was
of little benefit. Such improvement as occurred in the tribe was rather
due to marriage with better stock; marriages of this kind were made more
possible by the new environment, but the tendency to assortative mating
restricted them. It is further to be noted that while such marriages may
be good for the Juke family, they are bad for the nation as a whole,
because they tend to scatter anti-social traits.

[77] Key, _op. cit._, p. 7.

[78] Figures furnished (September, 1917) by the National Committee for
Mental Hygiene, 50 Union Square, New York City.

[79] This applies even to such an acute thinker as John Stuart Mill,
whose ideas were formed in the pre-Darwinian epoch, and whose works must
now be accepted with great reserve. Darwin was quite right in saying,
"The ignoring of all transmitted mental qualities will, as it seems to
me, be hereafter judged as a most serious blemish in the works of Mr.
Mill." (_Descent of Man_, p. _98_.) A quotation from the _Principles of
Political Economy_ (Vol. 1, p. 389) will give an idea of Mr. Mill's
point of view: "Of all the vulgar methods of escaping from the effects
of social and moral influences on the mind, the most vulgar is that of
attributing diversities of conduct and character to inherent natural
differences"!

[80] _Feeble-mindedness, its Causes and Consequences._ By H. H. Goddard,
director of the Research Laboratory of the Training School at Vineland,
New Jersey, for feeble-minded boys and girls. New York, The Macmillan
Co., 1914.

[81] Probably the word now covers a congeries of defects, some of which
may be non-germinal. Epilepsy is so very generally found associated with
various other congenital defects, that action should not be delayed.

[82] Goddard, H. H., _Feeble-Mindedness_, pp. 14-16.

[83] See the recent studies of C. B. Davenport, particularly _The Feebly
Inhibited_, Washington, Carnegie Institution, 1915.

[84] In this connection diagnosis is naturally of the utmost importance.
The recent action of Chicago, New York, Boston, and other cities, in
establishing psychological clinics for the examination of offenders is a
great step in advance. These clinics should be attached to the police
department, as in New York, not merely to the courts, and should pass on
offenders before, not after, trial and commitment.

[85] As a result of psychiatric study of the inmates of Sing Sing in
1916, it was said that two-thirds of them showed some mental defect