tion that causes the slums of the city. In our glowing spirit
of humanity we cry out to raise up "the submerged tenth." Rather, should we
not stamp them out of existence--treat them as a menace, and not as a thing
of pity?

Men, in general, rise; their minds are subjectively or objectively educated
to their mental limit. They cannot go beyond it. "The submerged tenth"
exists because its mental limit is low--often close to the upper margins of
feeble-mindedness--and because it is mentally incapable of rising to
anything else.]

[Illustration: _From "The Village of a Thousand Souls," Gesell, American
Magazine_

Evidence of a Vigorous Mind

The family that is vigorous, healthy in mind and body, "up and coming,"
reflects itself in a hundred different ways. Small matter whether or not it
is "an old family," has wealth, social position, a college education. A
daughter's or a son's happiness, the real, deep-down-inside happiness that
is worth while, may be more certainly insured by marrying with an eye to
mentality and stock than by a marriage into a so-called "first family."

Eugenics hath its reward.]

Under an ideal system of education the child would be left absolutely free
until the age of seven. We do not believe that the physical apparatus of
the mind is prepared for educational interference before that age, and we
know that the growth of the brain, physiologically and anatomically, is not
complete until after the seventh year.

The greater portion of a child's education necessarily depends upon its
environment. Heredity and environment, therefore, are the two factors which
determine the characters of any living thing. Heredity gives to the child
its potential greatness,--its promise of greatness. Whether these potential
qualities ever become real depends upon environment. A child may have the
hereditary (innate) ability to become a Shakespeare, but if his environment
is not suitable to the development of this potential greatness, he will
never realize his hereditary promise. In other words, the innate qualities
which he has, and which will make of him a Shakespeare are never "drawn
out" or educated. Hence he can never become great until environment
furnishes the means to him.

Environment, including education, does not add to the potential qualities
of inheritance. Education can only educate what heredity gives; it can give
or add nothing itself; it simply educates what is there already. There is
plenty of mat