This large early mortality of the offspring of the feeble-minded is, however, very far from settling the question of the disposal of the mentally defective, or we should not find families of them propagated from generation to generation.
The large number who die early merely serves, roughly speaking, to reduce the size of the abnormal family to the size of a normal family, and some authorities consider that it scarcely suffices to do this, for we must remember that there is a considerable mortality even in the so-called normal family during early life.
Even when there is no abnormal fertility in the defective family we may still have to recognize that, as Davenport and Weeks argue, their defectiveness is intensified by heredity.
Moreover, we have to consider the social disorder and the heavy expense which accompany the large infantile mortality.
Illegitimacy is frequently the result of feeble-mindedness, since feeble-minded women are peculiarly unable to resist temptation. A great number of such women are continually coming into the workhouses and giving birth to illegitimate children whom they are unable to support, and who often never become capable of supporting themselves, but in their turn tend to produce a new feeble-minded generation, more especially since the men who are attracted to these feeble-minded women are themselves—according to the generally recognized tendency of the abnormal to be attracted to the abnormal—feeble-minded or otherwise mentally defective.
There is thus generated not only a heavy financial burden, but also a perpetual danger to society, and, it may well be, a serious depreciation in the quality of the community.