VIRILE SENTIMENT 99 



incidental to his age and temperament. Students of 

 the Divorce Courts are familiar with examples that 

 serve to illustrate the disastrous consequences that as 

 often as not follow in the train of early folly. When a 

 youthful member of a noble family, forgetting, in his 

 ardent impulses, the traditions and glories of his 

 stock, marries a ballet girl ; or when a young man of 

 impulsive moods but of good parts otherwise, and 

 descended from a family of good social position, and 

 who will later develope all the aspirations that belong 

 to his social class, accepts a partner without any solid 

 qualifications and who has temporarily ascended from 

 a lower social level, and will manifest the instincts and 

 inherent defects of her class ; or when a young man, 

 who because of the stock from which he springs, will 

 later on in life become a more serious citizen, marries 

 a " dressed-up doll " ; or when a woman, yet in the 

 vernal stage of life and of refined instincts, consents 

 under parental pressure to marry a rich man of coarse 

 habits whose years are strewn with the sere and 

 yellow leaves, no Heaven-made conception of the 

 nature of human marriages can avert the inevitable 

 consequences. It is a serious question for the student 

 of Eugenics whether a youthful error of judgement in 

 marriage, by which " a dressed-up lie " and " a goose " 

 is chosen as a mate, should be visited with permanent 

 and lifelong punishment. The time has passed when 

 the dogma of " heaven-made marriages " should be 

 allowed to operate to the detriment of much that is 

 best or good in the community. No marriage that 

 declares by its results its obvious inequalities and 



