The only thing which Mr. Wiggam omitted was the trifling circumstance which shows that The Eugenics Society would, if it could, have inadvertently prevented each and every one of these notables from coming into being. Yet he thinks that he has discovered a way of distinguishing between the influences of heredity and of environment--when applied to families. “Environment,” he says,[136] “is important in determining character, but precisely how important I doubt very much if we have any means at present for determining, when it comes to one individual, whether we consider one particular act or the sum total of his character.... I doubt if we shall ever be able to determine whether a particular act by a particular individual, say whether he takes a drink of alcohol ... or whether he commits a crime, is due to his heredity or to his environment. The causes are so hopelessly intertwined that no one so far as I am aware has presented the slightest hope of measuring the relative influence of the two forces _within the individual_.... For all we know a man may commit a particular crime or take a particular drink entirely from environment.... But when it comes to the question as to which one of two individuals is the more likely to commit a crime at some time in his life or take to excessive drink, we are in reality dealing with a different set of scientific problems. And when we come to the question as to which family is likely to have more members who, in any one age of the world, will be unable to adjust themselves to sound social behavior ... we are in a field where we can measure the factors involved by fairly exact methods.” That is to say, we can measure results--after they have happened. It may even be granted that we can calculate roughly a family’s likelihood of producing distinguished descendants, basing the calculation on past performance. But obviously this in no way decides between the relative importance of environment and heredity. The question as to whether the family’s distinction came from its blood or from its traditions remains precisely where it was. Mr. Wiggam’s reasoning is quite of a piece with his reliability. He himself exclaims[137] about “the very, very few people in the world who can think ... the enormous number of people who cannot think, but who think they can think, and who mistake their mystical half-knowledge for social wisdom and act upon it.”