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Preface To The Jukes

From: The Jukes in 1915
Creator: Charles B. Davenport (author)
Date: 1916
Publisher: Carnegie Institution of Washington
Source: Available at selected libraries

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The most important conclusion that may be drawn from Dr. Estabrook's prolonged study of the Jukes forty years later is that not merely institutional care, nor better community environment, will cause good social reactions in persons who are feeble-minded and feebly inhibited, although, on the other hand, better stimuli will secure better reactions from weak stock than will poor stimuli. There is, indeed, no conflict between environment and heredity; each is a factor in all behavior. Environment affords the stimulus; heredity determines largely the nature of the reacting substance; the reaction, or behavior, is the resultant or product of the two. The great mistake that social agencies have made in the past is that they have overlooked the constitutional or hereditary factor of the reaction. The chief value of a detailed study of this sort lies in this: that it demonstrates again the importance of the factor of heredity.

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CHARLES B. DAVENPORT.
CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON,
DEPARTMENT OF EXPERIMENTAL EVOLUTION,
Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, N.Y., May 23, 1916.

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