360 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



ical vigor follows emotional marriages. The weak man or woman is 

 absorbed in one individual and hates or at least is indifferent to man- 

 kind. Normality and great physical vigor tend in the opposite direc- 

 tion. They displace hysterical emotions with a vivid power of ideal- 

 ization by which the whole race becomes the object of thought; the 

 gentle but vivid emotion of love that results goes out to all mankind 

 and becomes personal only incidentally if at all. Love and hysteria 

 are thus at opposite poles of physical vigor. Through idealization love 

 imposes qualities on others they do not have and diminishes the an- 

 tipathy of people to those of other stocks. It improves the race by 

 favoring marriages that are real crosses, thus giving to children new 

 and better qualities. The source of love is thus positive and within 

 one's self while that of an affinity is negative, being aroused only by 

 the presence of another defective individual. Love thus elevates and 

 broadens while an absorbing affinity narrows and degrades. 



In primitive times when the defective could not survive, emotional 

 marriages like an emotional religion had certain advantages, and it is 

 evident why they were both popular and useful, but when the domi- 

 nance of humanitarian motives allows the weak to arrive at maturity, 

 the power of affinity both in marriage and in religion becomes a potent 

 force for evil. The broader interests of the race are subordinated to a 

 narrow family and sectarian life. Vivid emotion and hysteria localize 

 and isolate mankind into opposing groups. The marriage of affinities 

 and the inbreeding of religious sectarians cut down the birth rate and 

 reduce the vigor of each generation. There is thus a force that pre- 

 vents degeneration even where the reduction of disease and humani- 

 tarian motives tend to permit the survival of the weak. Eace suicide 

 does in a generation what disease and brutality would have done in a 

 few years. The increase in the number of normal people would lift 

 men above the dangers of hysteria and degeneration and substitute 

 rational methods for the primitive impulses that control our social life; 

 social attraction based on a love for dissimilar people would then dis- 

 place the power of affinity binding together people of the same stock. 

 This higher bond can be secured only by transforming the defects due 

 to economic deficits into the positive characters that would come of 

 themselves if the mass of the people had income and leisure. Health, 

 vigor, idealization and the love of those dissimilar to ourselves are steps 

 in progress that follow the appearance of an economic surplus. The 

 misleading impulses of hysteria and the narrowing grasp of affinity 

 are the forces that mislead men in their marriage relations. Set them 

 aside and eugenic marriages will be as common as now they are rare. 



