behavior and of attainment suited
to their little power, the delight of conquest over difficulties need
not be denied to the feeble-minded.

Hence, again, it is far from wise and often far from most loving to
keep the child who can never grow up in the company of those who
follow the usual path from infancy to maturity. This means, of course,
if this idea of the more general use of special homes for the
subnormal is to be carried out, a large increase in provision of such
homes. Such large increase is often opposed by short-sighted economy.
The expense of establishing and maintaining such homes in adequate
number and of scientific and humane provisions is counted over and
taxpayers made alarmed at the sum total. What is lacking usually in
the count is the sum total of the enormous sums society now pays out
for the unregulated and socially dangerous neglect of this class of
unfortunates. Doctor Goddard's "Kallikak Family" and many other
accurate showings of what it costs to leave uncared for one
feeble-minded girl in unbefriended freedom should convince any sane
person that the most wasteful extravagance any community can commit is
such neglect of what Mr. Johnson has called "the divine fragments" of
humanity.

To make provision for the insane is seen to be a social necessity and
the family more than any other social institution profits by the
hospitals and asylums for the treatment and care of such. The relief
of having an insane relative taken away from the home, after months
and perhaps years of anxiety, fear, and suffering on the part of every
other member, cannot be too strongly pictured. The effort now making
to secure early treatment for the first symptoms of mental derangement
and to give even "border-line" cases and exceptionally "cranky" and
nervous people special treatment in mental hygiene marks the
beginning, we must believe, of effective preventive work in this line.
The feeble-minded, however, have a claim of perpetual childhood upon
the parental sympathy, and that, together with common ignorance
concerning their condition or numbers and the social dangers inherent
in their neglect, give us the alarming discrepancy in numbers between
the feeble-minded in suitable segregated care and those left to find
their way or lose it in the usual walks of life. Since Doctor Seguin
wrote his _Treatise on Idiocy_ in 1846 the verdict of science and of
philanthropy has been accumulating as to the need for the full and