708 THE FAMILY 



women are marrying in utter contempt of the warnings of science. 

 Domestic animals are literally better bred than are human beings. 

 There must be a higher ideal of sexual choice. Experience shows 

 that in wedlock natural and sexual selection should play a smaller, 

 and artificial selection a larger, role; the safety of the social body 

 requires that a check be put upon the propagation of the unfit. 

 Here the state has a function to perform. In the future much more 

 than now, let us hope, the marriage of persons mentally delinquent or 

 tainted by hereditary disease or crime will be legally restrained. 



Moreover, the social culture of the future must consciously foster 

 a higher race-altruism which shall be capable of present sacrifice for 

 the permanent good of the coming generations. A wise sociologist 

 has already outlined the elements of a new science of Eugenics - - a 

 science dealing with all the influences which improve and develop to 

 advantage the inborn qualities of the .race. 1 Indeed, family senti- 

 ment in some measure must yield to race sentiment. Too often at 

 present family sentiment is but an expression of avid selfishness and 

 greed which are no slight hindrance to sociological progress. " When 

 human beings and families rationally subordinate their own interests 

 as perfectly to the welfare of future generations as do animals under 

 the control of instinct," says Dr. Wood, 2 " the world will have a more 

 enduring type of family life than exists at present." May we not 

 confidently believe that the family, surmounting the dangers which 

 beset it, is capable of developing new powers and discharging new 

 functions of vital importance to mankind? In the even partnership 

 of the domestic union, knit together by psychic as well as physical 

 ties, the house-father and the house-mother are already becoming 

 more conscious of their higher function and responsibility as father 

 and mother of the race. 



1 Gal ton, Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope, and Aims, in American Journal oj 

 Sociology, x, 1 ff. 



2 Dr. Thomas D. Wood, Some Controlling Ideals of the Family Life of the 

 Future, 27. 



