CHAPTER L

HEREDITY, ENVIRONMENT AND REDEMPTION

=The burden of the feeble-minded.=--The history of Emma W., at one time an inmate of Letchworth Village, a New York institution for the feeble-minded, should be convincing that it is bad policy to let the feeble-minded drift in and out of the almshouse; that it is but humanity and economy to segregate them, and to strike at the causes of mental defect. Emma W. came to life in an almshouse, stamped with illegitimacy and feeble-mindedness. Her family’s record reads: mother, two brothers, and a sister feeble-minded; mother’s father feeble-minded and mother’s mother tuberculous. When a second child was expected the mother was induced by well-meaning people to marry the father, who was a drunken epileptic. Two children were born. Still later the same well-meaning people aided her to get a divorce in order to marry the father of another child about to be born. Since then four more have been born. All of these children are feeble-minded. Entire family, with exception of the oldest child, is at large. The accompanying chart, taken from _The Survey_, March 2, 1912, shows graphically her heredity.

Our studies at Vineland have shown that 65 per cent. of feeble-minded people are the children of feeble-minded people; in other words, that the condition is strongly hereditary. Therefore, if these people are allowed to become parents, they will bring into the world another group of people like themselves who will thus perpetuate the social waste.

The following charts show the heredity of two families. We have two hundred like these--65 per cent. of all our inmates show such history.

The symbols used in the charts are the following: Square indicates male. Circle indicates female. A capital letter indicates disease, habit, or condition, as follows: A, alcoholic (habitual drunkard); B, blind; C, criminal; D, deaf; E, epileptic; F, feeble-minded, either black letter, or white letter on black ground (the former when sex is unknown); I, insane; N, normal; Sx, grave sexual offender; Sy, syphilitic; T, tuberculosis. Any of these letters may be used with no square or circle when sex is unknown. When even the letter is omitted the vertical line points to the fact that there was an individual of whom nothing is known. Small black circle indicates miscarriage--time is given (in months) when known, also cause; stillbirth is shown as a miscarriage at nine months; b = born; d = died; m = married; inf = infancy; hand shows which child is in the institution for feeble-minded; illeg = illegitimate; heavy line under any symbol indicates that the person is in some institution at the expense of society.

Chart I shows the descendants of a feeble-minded woman who was married twice. Her first husband was normal. There were four normal children, one of whom is alcoholic. This alcoholic son married a normal woman and produced two feeble-minded and three normal children. This is another instance of the defect skipping a generation, being transmitted by the grandmother through the father.

The second marriage of this feeble-minded woman was with an alcoholic and immoral man. The result was four feeble-minded children. One of these became alcoholic and syphilitic and married a feeble-minded woman. She was one of three imbecile children, born of two imbecile parents. The result here could, of course, be nothing but defectives. There were two stillborn, and three that died in infancy. Six others lived to be determined feeble-minded. One of these was a criminal. Two are in the institution at Vineland. The mother’s sister also has a feeble-minded son.

Chart II (in two parts) is in some ways the most astonishing one we have. There are in the institution at Vineland five children representing, as we had always supposed, three entirely independent families. We discovered, however, that they all belonged to one stock. In Chart II, _A_, the central figure, the alcoholic father of three of the children in the institution, married for his third wife a woman who was a prostitute and a keeper of a house of ill fame, herself feeble-minded, and with five feeble-minded brothers and sisters. One of these sisters is the grandmother represented on Chart II, _B_.

On _A_ it will be seen that this alcoholic man was four times married. He comes from a good family but was spoiled in his bringing up, became alcoholic and immoral--a degenerate man. His first wife, however, was a normal woman and it is claimed that the two children were normal. For his second wife, he took out of the poorhouse a feeble-minded woman. Her children were: two normal, one that died young, and one feeble-minded. He married the third time. The woman was the prostitute above referred to. She had three illegitimate children, all feeble-minded. After their marriage, they had three children, all of whom are feeble-minded. Two of these are in this institution. The father then deserted this woman and married a fourth wife, who is alcoholic and a prostitute. Of this union, however, there are no children.

There is, moreover, very strong evidence that he is the father of the third child in this institution by another woman, who is also feeble-minded.

Chart II, _B_, will be understood if we note that the mother’s mother is a sister of the third wife of the much-married man of Chart II, _A_. This sister married a feeble-minded man, and the result of that union was seven feeble-minded children, of whom one is a criminal and one an epileptic. Four are married. The feeble-minded epileptic woman married a normal man, who is one of a fairly good family. His mother was insane, the father died in an almshouse; however, we find no mental defect. As the result of this marriage, we have seven feeble-minded children, four others that died in infancy, and there were two miscarriages. This is the fourth child of this strain that is in our institution. The fifth one referred to is a half-sister of the other girl referred to on Chart II, _A_.

The foregoing charts and description were taken from the article of Henry H. Goddard, Ph.D., Director of Vineland, N. J., School for Feeble-minded, in the March 2nd, 1912, issue of the _Survey_.

=The agencies of improvement.=--In all organic life, vegetable, animal and man, two agencies are ever operative; heredity and environment. In plant life these two agencies operate entirely on the physical plain. This is perhaps true among the lower forms of animal life. But, among the higher forms of animal life, we find very distinct manifestations of rudimentary intelligence. Among the higher animals, experiments show that these agencies are operative on the physical and mental plains. In man these agencies are operative on the physical, mental and moral plains. Among plants and animals, where these two agencies are under the intelligent control of man, improvements are marked and rapid. Where they are not under the control of man, progress is scarcely perceptible.

Plants and animals live in harmony with law, man appears to be largely out of harmony with law; plants and animals keep law, man violates law. That man is fallen and needs additional help to heredity and environment is apparent to all who think. This help we call conversion, regeneration or redemption. It is not the province of this chapter to advocate any theory of religion. The purpose of this chapter is to show the relation of these agencies in the improvement of the human race.

=What one receives at birth constitutes his heredity.=--This consists of a normal or defective physical constitution, the natural bent of mind and its rudimentary possibilities and the innate tendencies toward good or evil. The physical, mental and moral influences one receives after birth constitute his environment. Ideal environment tends to direct, develop and to mature the results of good heredity and to correct the results of bad heredity. Bad environment tends to neutralize the effects of good heredity and to intensify the effects of bad heredity. If a child has inherited a frail constitution, this can be overcome largely or entirely by proper physical training, appropriate food and observing other health laws. In such cases, heavy drugging will do but little good. If nature is aided by intelligent parents, who have inspired their unfortunate child with an intense interest and purpose to out-grow every defect, he will accomplish wonders. If a child has inherited a tendency toward tuberculosis, this can be entirely overcome by physical training, deep breathing, nutritious food and ventilated bed rooms. The same is true of many other physical defects.

=Our mental possibilities are largely inherited.=--Schools and colleges do not produce great minds. They direct, train and develop the inherited mental possibilities. Children of mediocrity should have every possible encouragement and opportunity for mental improvement. They cannot succeed without it. Their offspring will inherit improved mental possibilities, if their parents are wisely trained in childhood. Children who have inherited special genius will succeed in spite of limited opportunities, but they will succeed better by having the advantage of a good education. A practical study of the psychology of childhood, in relation to mental heredity, would lead parents and teachers to be more patient, sympathetic and wise in the mental training of many children.

=Heredity and moral tendencies.=--Heredity is just as potential in the moral realm as in the physical and mental. Children inherit tendencies toward good or evil, virtue or vice. What they inherit morally is determined by the relation of their ancestors to moral laws.

=Parental responsibility.=--Parents are not only responsible for the number of children born in the home, whether few or many, close together or far apart, but they are also largely responsible for their children’s being born with strong or weak constitutions, brilliant or stupid minds, good or bad tendencies. When this responsibility is more fully understood by parents, their children will be better born. The greatest blessing parents can bequeath to their children is not wealth, but a good heredity. A very large part of a child’s training, good or bad, is prenatal. Right from birth, before environment has had time to influence the child, examples of children who are easily trained, and cases that are trained with the greatest difficulty, are perfectly familiar to all of us.

=Environment is fully as potential in a child’s life as is heredity.=--A child may receive the most unfavorable heredity, and good environment may lead the child to become much superior to his parents, brothers and sisters. Again, a child may receive the very best heredity, and a bad environment may lead him to mental neglect and moral disaster. Parents can determine largely the heredity of the child; but they can furnish only a small part of a child’s environment. Unknown to the parents, a playmate, a neighbor, a servant, in a few words or a single act, may give a child an impulse toward vice that may lead the child into years of sin. The real cause of the child’s going wrong may ever remain unknown to the parents.

=Value of early environment.=--The total of a child’s environment is furnished by the whole of society. Fortunately, parents have largely the control of the first years of a child’s environment. Unfortunately, most parents have tried to safeguard the virtue of their children by keeping them ignorant of everything pertaining to their sex natures. Just here parents have often failed because of their false idea of good environment. Ignorance of the sex nature is not a safeguard. Children are often engaging in sexual sins months or years before the parents dream of danger. Many servants employed in and about the home are impure in mind or practice or both; often they are sex perverts. They take a fiendish delight in teaching vice to even a small child. Parents cannot be too careful in the selection of servants. They should have the most positive understanding that no profanity, obscenity or vice is to be engaged in by the servant. Sexual vice is the most common and dangerous vice of childhood. It always leads to other forms of wrong-doing. Proper sex instruction, given by the parents at the right time and in the right way, is the only sane safeguard to the virtue of childhood.

=Heredity, environment, Christ.=--A bad environment may lead a child of good heredity for a number of years into vice and sin; but the inherent good tendencies often assert themselves and help the prodigal to return.

A child with a bad heredity, made and kept good by an ideal environment, is never as strong or safe as a child of good heredity and good environment.

Every child at birth is the sum total of all the influences, good and bad, along the line of his lineage back to Adam. Every child has more or less of hereditary degeneracy. All children are exposed more or less to bad environment. All children need to accept Christ, to be transformed by His power and freed from the domination of inherited and acquired evil. Good heredity and good environment make it easy for children to accept Christ and live the Christ life. Bad heredity and bad environment make it difficult for children to accept and live the Christ life.

It is the duty of parents to know and practice the laws of heredity and prenatal culture; to furnish the child as far as possible with a good environment and a sane knowledge of himself; and to influence him to accept Christ.

Each child’s duty to himself is to recognize his conscious personal obligation to himself and to society, of mastering every inherited and acquired weakness, of developing fully every inherent possibility, and of accepting Christ as a necessity to the fullest attainment of the loftiest ideals.

God’s greatest blessing, offered to every individual, is personal redemption through faith in His Son.

These three agencies, good heredity, good environment, and redemption; or right generation, right education and regeneration, are essential to a perfect life.