" An interesting example
of this sort of teaching is furnished by Boris Sidis, whose feelings are
outraged because geneticists have represented that some forms of
insanity are hereditary. He declaims for several pages[31] in this
fashion:
"The so-called scientific method of the eugenists is radically faulty,
in spite of the rich display of colored plates, stained tables,
glittering biological speculations, brilliant mathematical formulae and
complicated statistical calculations. The eugenists pile Ossa on Pelion
of facts by the simple method of enumeration which Bacon and the
thinkers coming after him have long ago condemned as puerile and futile.
From the savage's belief in sympathetic, imitative magic with its
consequent superstitions, omens, and taboos down to the articles of
faith and dogmas of the eugenists we find the same faulty, primitive
thought, guided by the puerile, imbecile method of simple enumeration,
and controlled by the wisdom of the logical _post hoc, ergo propter
hoc_."
Now if resemblance between parent and offspring were, as Dr. Sidis
supposes, the only evidence of inheritance of mental traits which the
eugenist can produce, his case would indeed be weak. And it is perfectly
true that "evidence" of this kind has sometimes been advanced as
sufficient by geneticists who should have known better.
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