complex combination of traits
It is apparent that the make-up of an individual is the result of a very
complex combination of traits. For this reason, the makeup is not likely
to fall heir to all 'bad' traits, any more than it is to all 'good'
traits. Even the feeble-minded, who have fallen heir to such an
intensely undesirable trait--or rather, to the lack of intensely
desirable traits--in many instances have simultaneously inherited many
desirable traits, such as kindness, gentleness and generosity, often
lacking in those possessed of scholarly capacities. Many women of the
border-line type of feeble-mindedness, where mental incapacity often
passes for innocence, possess the qualities of charm felt in children,
and are consequently quickly selected in marriage. If a mentally able
man possess as an ideal of womanhood other traits than mental capacity,
no amount of schooling for his child can make up for the difference
between the mental capacity of the offspring of such a mating, and the
offspring of a mating with an able-minded woman. Although the trait of
able-mindedness is dominant, so that the mating of an able and a feeble
mind will result in fairly able-minded offspring, who may even be above
the average, mentally, such offspring carry in their own germ plasm the
defect derived from their feeble-minded parent, which defect may then be
passed on to future generations through the germ plasm from which their
children get their inheritance. A mother"s hereditary influence on the
child is just as important a factor as the father"s, generally speaking.
Where feeble-mindedness exists on a family line, care should be
exercised by the able-minded members of that line not to mate with
another line possessing cases of feeble-mindedness, lest the offspring
then fall heir to feeble-mindedness, which can skip a generation. An
appreciation of what is feeble-minded, and a realization of its
inheritability can not help but modify a man or a woman"s admiration
for the traits or lack of traits which it embraces.