124 THE MENDEL JOURNAL 



the existence of such hopelessly defective strains 

 in the population can hardly be over-estimated. It 

 is truly unfortunate that they should exist, and not 

 only so, but that they should increase the way they 

 do : but it will always be making the best of a bad 

 job — to use a phrase that is more blunt than 

 elegant — if we can avail ourselves of the knowledge 

 of such infamies in preparing for the fight which 

 must inevitably come sooner or later against such 

 sources of weakness and degeneracy. It will not 

 do to forget that there are many stocks whose 

 nature, in the ^vords of the old writer of the Wisdom 

 of Solomon in the JcAvish Apocrypha, by birth is 

 evil and their wickedness inborn, whose manner of 

 thought can in no wise ever be changed, for they 

 are " a seed accursed from the beginning."* 



The idea that production of a clean bill of health, 

 either in the shape of a doctor's certificate or of an in- 

 surance policy, should be made an essential condition 

 as a preliminary to marriage would, if attempted, 

 defeat its own ends. That this is so cannot be too 

 widely understood before the time comes when some 

 government — as governments have such a habit of 

 doing — begins to interfere blindly, as may perhaps 

 happen any day in these over-legislated times. No 

 attempt to put difficulties in the way of marriage 

 will permanently affect the birth-rate except among 

 the more decent and self-respecting sections of the 

 community. The others will remain as they were, 

 and might very easily be encouraged by such legisla- 



* Wisdom of Solomon, R. V^, ch. 12, vv. 10-11. 



