On inheritance of mental characters : the Harveian oration for 1910 delivered before the Royal College of Physicians of London on October 18 / by H.B. Donkin.

  • Donkin, Horatio Bryan, Sir, 1845-1927.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On inheritance of mental characters : the Harveian oration for 1910 delivered before the Royal College of Physicians of London on October 18 / by H.B. Donkin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and, according to their surroundings, they follow the path of least resistance. This path is more often than not, but by no means always, the path of unsocial or criminal action. These statements about criminals will appear to be dogmatic, but are, I think, capable of proof. I have reason for believing that the report of an extensive inquiry now nearing completion, which has been carried out by the medical officers of our convict prisons, will go far, in itself, towards their justification. This matter, indeed, is of importance, not because any serious students of this subject now accept the doctrine of hereditary criminality, or consider the so-called science of “ criminology ” as aught else than a mass of imperfect and unclassified observations linked together by un- tested hypothesis; but because this doctrine, so much emphasised by Lombroso, Max Nordau, and others, of the hereditary nature of crime, or, in other words, of the criminal being a racial “ degenerate/’ is still very dominant over the public mind. It is widely popularised, at the risk of producing practical effects, not only by writers of fiction, but also by philanthro- pists, journalists, and public speakers on social ques- tions. It is apparently assumed as true by at least one prominent writer on biology*; while another * Professor Bateson, in his book on Mendel’s Principles of Here- dity, p. 306, writes as follows, after having stated on a previous page that in “ the pre-Mendelian period, the expression ‘ genetic ’ had no definite meaning ” : “ Genetic knowledge ” (by which, it
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