CONCERNING A FORM OF DEGENERACY 327
regarding the increase or decrease of dependency, defectiveness, or other marked form of degeneracy. The increase, serious though it be, is not quite so alarming as would appear from the often quoted figures of the United States census, with the con- clusion drawn from their casual inspection by some students of sociology.' Until the census shall have been taken a number of times upon a uniform system and by trustworthy officers, who shall have been selected for competence alone, we shall be unable to prove by ofiicial figures some conclusions which other- wise seem certain.
The object of the present and a succeeding paper is to set forth some facts regarding one of the most dangerous of the degenerate classes, to tell what measures have been taken in various states to remedy or avert the evils they threaten, and to suggest a possible and hopeful method with regard to them ; a method which if it shall be successful, may possibly indicate for us a course to pursue with regard to other classes of degen- erates.
There are few persons who do not exhibit some of the so-called stigmata of degeneracy. A desire to forestall criticism makes it needful to say here that only those who are so degen- erate as to be a source of marked danger to the community are the subjects of this essay.
THE FEEBLE-MINDED.
The phrase " feeble-minded," for some years past, and espe- cially in the United States, has been adopted as a useful generic term. Excluding insanity, it includes all other grades of mental defectiveness, from that of the hopeless and abject idiot, incapa- ble of any purposive action, up to the high-grade imbecile, who would be classed as normal but that he occasionally betrays his feebleness by conspicuously foolish errors of judgment, or lack of common sense, or weakness of will, or failure to comprehend common proprieties ; and the so-called moral imbecile who only shows mental abnormality by a total lack of moral perception.
'Census of 1850 showed 15,787 idiots, or 681 in each million of total population; census of 1890, 95,609 idiots, or 1,527 in each million — a total increase of 505 per cent., or, per million, 124 per cent., in forty years.
