MENTAL QUALITIES

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 22, 26 January 1929, Page 11

MENTAL QUALITIES

EFFECT OF HEREDITY

PROFESSOR'S VIEWS

I.By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

AUCKLAND, This Day

In a lecture at the Science Congress, Professor Ben ham, of the Otago University, summarised the investigations in recent years relating to tho subject of heredity. Ho said that in • his opinion it was not proved to tho satisfaction of biologists that mental qualities arc inherited in the same manner and to the same degree as are mini's physical characteristics. Tho physical characteristics of man, as of the lower animals, wore tho result of the interaction of hereditary and environmental stimuli, and so it was with mental qualities.

The last Government should receive great credit for having placed upon the Statute Book two . measures which, if carried out as intended, would go a long way toward improving the conditions. The Town Planning Act should raise the standard of health and the conditions of life, and, therefore, of the mental development of the people generally. The Act relating to mental defectives would, if tactfully and sympathetically applied, dp much to help in border-line cases at an age when it was quite possible that a suitable and wise method of education, removal from tainted surroundings, and so on would

make for the happiness and prolonged usefulness of many who would otherwise become unsocial and be a burden on tho State. - '. '