Epilepsy, one symptom of taint, is more or less interchangeable with other defects; the taint, as a whole, is an inheritable unit whose inheritance will appear as any one of many defects. This is shown by the fact that very few epileptics have an epileptic parent. Starr's analysis of 700 cases of epilepsy emphasizes this point. Epilepsy in a parent 6 Epilepsy in a near relative 136 Alcoholism in a parent 120 Nervous Diseases in family 118 Rheumatism and Tuberculosis 184 Combinations of above diseases 142 As medicine and surgery cannot add or delete plasmic factors, the only way to stamp out neuropathy in severe forms would be to sterilize victims by X-rays. This would be painless, would protect the race and not interfere with personal or even with sexual liberty. In fifty years such diseases would be almost extinct, and those arising from accident or the chance union of dormant factors in apparently normal people could easily be dealt with. There are 100,000 epileptics in Great Britain, and as _all_ their children carry a taint which tends to reappear as epilepsy in a later generation _the number of epileptics doubles every forty years_. We protect these unfortunates against others; why not posterity against them? Neuropaths must pass on _some_ defect; therefore, though victims may marry, _no neuropath has a right to have children_. * * * * * CHAPTER XXV CHARACTER "All men are not equal, either at birth or by training. Nature gives each of us the neural clay, with its properties of pliability and of receiving impressions; nurture moulds and fashions it, until a _character_ is formed, a mingling of innate disposition and acquired powers. But clay will be clay to the end; you cannot expect it to be marble."--Thomson & Geddes. "Heaven lay not my transgression to my charge."--King John. It is essential that attendants, relatives, and friends carefully study the character of neuropaths, and recognize clearly how abnormal it is, for untold misery is caused by judging neuropaths by normal standards. Patients are often harshly treated because others regard the victim of defective inhibition as having gone deliberately to work, through wicked perversity and pure wilfulness, to make himself a nuisance, to persist in being a nuisance, and to refuse to be other than a nuisance, rather than exercise what more fortunate men are pleased to term self-control. Character is usually appraised as "good" or "evil" by the nature of a man's actions, the assumption being made that he can control his impulses if he be so minded. This is not so. "Good" and "evil" are only relative terms. What one man thinks "evil", a second holds "good", while a third is not influenced.