100 THE MENDEL JOURNAL 



disastrous disabilities " should be permanently main- 

 tained. If one of the two partners is capable and the 

 other grossly incapable, if one is intelligent and thrifty 

 and guided by high ideals, and the other is foolish, 

 thriftless, and incapable of rising above the lowest 

 aspirations, then the marriage, as in a part of the 

 days of Rome, should be possible of mutual dissolu- 

 tion. For to permanently bind a good citizen to a 

 bad one is waste of the good civic material. 



I am aware that the problem is a complex one, 

 and it is not simplified by the possibility that the 

 incapacity to make a good judgement in the choice of 

 a mate may be an inherent quality, and not always a 

 passing aberration of youth, and will be therefore 

 hereditarily transmitted. But in spite of that, 

 perhaps it would be wiser to give an individual at 

 least one opportunity of rectifying a youthful mis- 

 judgement. 



I am treading, I know, upon dangerous ground^ 

 and I hope that I shall not be misunderstood. I trust 

 that nothing which I have said can be construed into 

 implying any sympathy with those ideas of pro- 

 miscuous marriage that in certain quarters are being 

 preached by men whose fanaticism or desire for 

 notoriety is greater than their knowledge of either the 

 history or nature of mankind. I, for one, repudiate 

 all such ideas. But the sanctity and holiness of 

 marriage may be destroyed when earthly considera- 

 tions and ideals are ignored by a dogma that has no 

 justification in true beUef or in truth.* 



* See Appendix, pp. 113 and 114. 



