"In no place is this subject of the power of heredity in relation to environment so easily studied as among our children. A group of many little children came to us from the state school, being untrainable there. They have had with us the same teaching and the same companionship. Each one has lived, eaten and slept among the others, and, so far as we know, with but one exception, those of vicious parentage have turned instinctively to vicious traits by preference, while those of simple but honest stock do evil things only under strong temptation, and do not persist in them after the wrong is pointed out." =By No Means All Delinquents Are Defectives.--=One must not overlook the fact, however, that _delinquent_ and _defective_ are by no means synonymous terms, and that many delinquents are with little doubt the product of adverse social circumstances. The recent careful work of Doctor William Healy[13] in connection with the juvenile delinquents of Chicago shows convincingly that the underlying causations of delinquency are many. Such factors as immorality or constant quarreling of parents, bad companions, lack of parental control, defective sense organs, debilitating habits, lack of healthy mental interests and a host of other environmental factors are not infrequently sufficient in themselves to develop delinquency in the absence of inherited deficiency. The present-day efforts of the student of heredity should not be misunderstood. They are not attempts to make all delinquents out defectives, but rather to determine what percentage of delinquents may be legitimately reckoned as defective and to make the facts known. Since there is no longer any reasonable doubt that, to express it in the mildest terms, an amount of delinquency far from negligible is due in great measure to congenital omissions or propensities, then the sooner the public learns this the better, for we may then set about supplementing our present efforts at race betterment through external improvement by devising means of cleansing the fountain source as well. It can scarcely be doubted that the average man differs little if any in inherent personality and capacity from many a criminal who is such by occasion rather than by undue predisposition. Who can truthfully answer how many individuals there are who are not potentially criminals to some extent, given sufficient evocative conditions of ignorance, vice, adverse economic pressure and undue temptation? "Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied."