This conclusion might easily have been reached from a study of the facts in Chapter I, but it seemed worth while to take time to present the fact in a more concrete form as the result of actual measurements. The evidence allows no doubt about the existence of considerable mental and physical differences between men.
The question naturally arises, "What is the cause of these differences?"
The study of twins showed that the differences could not be due to differences in training or home surroundings. If the reader will think back over the facts set forth in the first chapter, he will see clearly that the fundamental differences in men can not be due to anything that happens after they are born; and the facts presented in the second chapter showed that these differences can not be due in an important degree to any influences acting on the child prior to birth.
CHAPTER IV
THE INHERITANCE OF MENTAL CAPACITIES
We have come to the climax of the eugenist's preliminary argument; if the main differences between human beings are not due to anything in the environment or training, either of this or previous generations, there can be but one explanation for them.
They must be due to the ancestry of the individual—that is, they must be matters of heredity in the ordinary sense, coupled with the fortuitous variations which accompany heredity throughout the organic world.
We need not limit ourselves, however, to the argument by exclusion, for it is not difficult to present direct evidence that the differences between men are actually inherited by children from parents. The problem, formally stated, is to measure the amount by which the likeness of individuals of like ancestry surpasses the likeness of individuals of different ancestry. After subtraction of the necessary amount for the greater likeness in training, that the individuals of like ancestry will have, whatever amount is left will necessarily, represent the actual inheritance of the child from its ancestors—parents, grandparents, and so on.
Obviously, the subtraction for environmental effects is the point at which a mistake is most probable. We may safely start, therefore, with a problem in which no subtraction whatever need be made for this cause. Eye color is a stock example, and a good one, for it is not conceivable that home environment or training would cause a change in the color of brothers' eyes.