d parents, and the method
provides no measure for separating the two.

In sociology the method of experiment has but limited employment. The
modern sociologist cannot mate the parents nor vivisect the soul,
after the methods of the biologist. He can only move the child from
one education to another, and his experiment is incidental to the
larger purpose of saving the child. His results, too, can appear only
as a ratio of probability; but this ratio measures the mental and
moral qualities themselves directly and not by inference. Elmira
Reformatory and others cure eighty per cent of their charges. Model
placing-out institutions and free kindergartens save nearly all. And
these are taken from the most vicious and criminal parentage in the
land. Our five and one-half per cent of degenerates must therefore be
greatly reduced in order to find the residuum of congenitals. I have
made the following deductions:

ESTIMATED DEFECTIVES NOT CONGENITAL, PER MILLION POPULATION.

Criminals (80 per cent of total) 7,369
Prostitutes (80 per cent of total) 4,000
Outdoor Paupers (80 per cent of total) 16,000
Tramps (80 per cent of total) 1,046
Drunkards (50 per cent of total) 9,500
------
37,915
Which deducted from 55,473
leaves congenital defectives 17,558

equal to 1.75 per cent of the population. Overlappings would diminish
this ratio; greater infant mortality and the omitted youthful
defectives would increase it.

If less than two per cent of the births are below the normal Aryan
brain level, on the other hand possibly two per cent are above the
average, and should be classed as the geniuses who could achieve
eminence regardless of surroundings. The remaining ninety per cent or
more are born with ordinary equipment; they are hereditarily neither
good nor bad, criminal nor virtuous, brilliant nor stupid. With these
masses of the people the first fifteen years of infancy and youth are
decisive.

We may now classify the selective forces of society. Social selection
is partly natural and partly artificial. It originates artificially in
the self-consciousness of dominant individuals. Struggle and conflict
ensue, out of which private property survives in its various forms as
an intended control over others. This control is then transmitted as
the various social institutio