HUMAN CONSERVATION 261 



will, extreme intellectual vigor and mental grasp 

 akin to rapacity," but with an extraordinary deficiency 

 in moral sense. She was divorced from her hus- 

 band "on the ground of adultery and other immo- 

 ralities. . . . The evil trait was in the blood, for one 

 of her sisters murdered her own son and a brother 

 murdered his own sister." That Jonathan Edwards 

 owed his remarkable qualities largely to his grand- 

 mother rather than to his grandfather is shown by 

 the fact that Richard Edwards, the grandfather, 

 married again after his divorce and had five sons and 

 one daughter, but none of their numerous progeny 

 "rose above mediocrity, and their descendants gained 

 no abiding reputation." As shown by subsequent 

 events, it would have been a great eugenic mistake 

 to have deprived the world of Elizabeth Tuttle's 

 gennplasm, although it would have been easy to 

 find judges to condemn her. 



Dr. C. V. Chapin recently said with reference to 

 the eugenic regulation of marriage by physician's 

 certificate: "The causes of heredity are many and 

 very conflicting. The subject is a difficult one, and 

 I for one would hesitate to say, in a great many cases 

 where I have a pretty good knowledge of the family, 

 where marriage would, or would not, be desirable." 



Desirability and undesirability must always be 

 regarded as relative terms more or less indefinable. 

 In attempting to define them, it makes a great dif- 

 ference whether the interested party holds to a puri- 

 tan or a cavalier standard. To show how far human 

 judgment may err as well as how radically human 



