VIRILE SENTIMENT 95 



ten children. These two facts are important, because 

 they demonstrate that physical and mental unfitness 

 and civic uselessness are not necessarily accompanied 

 by infertility, nor low fertility, nor shortlivedness. 

 Indeed, there is here high fertility and longevity. 

 When we bear in mind that there is good reason to 

 believe that fertility is a character which is heredi- 

 tarily transmitted, we have to recall the possibility 

 that the grandparents on both sides may have ten 

 children, that is, twenty altogether. And if these 

 twenty marry, as the unfit always do, and they marry 

 their " likes," as they also nearly always do, and if 

 each of these twenty pairs of parents have ten chil- 

 dren, we are faced with the appalling possibility that 

 from this family alone there are living in our present 

 generation two hundred individuals carrying or mani- 

 festing the tubercular, paralytic, and epileptic diatheses! 

 And if we go forward to the next generation there may 

 be two thousand of them, and in the third generation 

 twenty thousand of them ! An army of epileptics, 

 paralytics, and tuberculates ! 



It may be asserted that I am indulging in wild 

 and sensational alarms, and that this sort of thing has 

 never occurred and can never happen. It is so easy 

 for any nation to play the part of the traditional 

 ostrich, for the sands of self-delusion are loose and 

 soft. And it is hard to be brave when problems that 

 can be put off for some one else to solve call upon us 

 to solve them now, before they become so bad that 

 their remedy must be heroic. They who assert that 

 these things can never happen, and that a great army 



