=Grades of Feeble-Mindedness.--=As to the various grades of feeble-mindedness, while no sharp lines of demarcation can be drawn, a rough and ready test usually applied is the relative ability of such subnormal individuals to take care of themselves. In all, the conditions exist from birth or shortly after. _Idiots_ are such defective individuals as are unable to take care of themselves even to the matter of guarding against common physical dangers. Their mentality does not progress beyond that of a two-year-old child. _Imbeciles_ can take care of themselves in the cruder physical ways, but are unable to earn their living. Their mental age ranges from three to seven years inclusive. _Morons_, or the "feeble-minded" in a more specific usage of the term, can under proper direction become more or less self-supporting but they are as a rule incapable of undertaking affairs which demand judgment or involve unrestricted competition with normal individuals. Their intelligence ranges with that of normal children from seven to twelve years of age. The last class grades up insensibly into the shiftless, ne'er-do-well types which exist in every community. It is the hordes of the feeble-minded in the restricted sense that afford our most serious problems to-day. The idiot and the imbecile are usually early and easily recognized and are kept more or less under restraint, but the higher grades of feeble-minded, the so-called moron type, can be detected often only by carefully devised tests. =About Two-Thirds of the Feeble-Minded Have Inherited Their Condition.--=Concerning the various types of feeble-mindedness there is strong evidence that heredity is a factor of greater magnitude than in most insanities. All facts point to the conclusion that most mental deficiency is strongly inheritable and that the majority of our defectives of this type come from degenerate stocks. Practically all specialists at the heads of asylums and homes for the mentally deficient concur in the opinion that about two-thirds of the cases are hereditary. For example, Doctor Alfred Wilmarth, superintendent of the Wisconsin Home for Feeble-minded, says: "My own observations, and those of others in this country and Europe, would indicate that at least two-thirds of the feeble-minded have defective relatives." In his study of two thousand children tested by the Binet measuring scale for intelligence, Doctor Henry H. Goddard, director of the Department of Research at the Training School for Feeble-minded at Vineland, N. J., remarks concerning heredity of feeble-mindedness: "But we now know that sixty-five per cent. of these children have inherited the condition, and that if they grow up and marry they will transmit the same condition to their offspring. Indeed, we know that this class of people is increasing at an enormous rate in every community and unless we do something to stop this great stream of bad protoplasm we shall some day be swamped in a sea of degeneracy."