National life from the standpoint of science / by Karl Pearson.
- Pearson, Karl, 1857-1936.
- Date:
- 1905
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Credit: National life from the standpoint of science / by Karl Pearson. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![Heredity and Conduct loi which it is prevalent has been freely repro¬ ducing itself. If we. try to attribute the increase to the ' thranged ' state of modern life, we have only to consider the rapid in¬ crease of imbecile children. [Diagram,] The percentage of the mentally defective among the pauper population is also in¬ creasing rapidly. This spread of the degene¬ rate is not due to harder modern conditions of life, for these conditions are substantially better than they were 50 or 100 years ago. It is due to two facts : 1. That the action of natural selection has been largely suspended ; the physically and mentally unfit are now tended and provided for in a manner quite unknown 100 years ago. 2. The relative fertility of the fit and unfit in the community has changed widely since 1877. A hundred years ago you hung a rogue if you caught him. Nowadays you provide him with soup-kitchens and night- shelters up and down the country, and leave him to propagate his kind at will. To cite an often-quoted German case : One woman, a thief, a drunkard, and a tramp, had 709 traceable descendants ; of these 106 were illegitimate, 142 tramps and beggars, and 64 lived on charity ; 181 of her female descendants were women of ill-fame. Of the total tribe 7 were murderers and 76 convicts ; and altogether, in 75 years in trials, almshouses, and prisons, the tribe cost a](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18021785_0106.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
