130 THE MENDEL JOURNAL 



a sound nation is to be sought in the creation of an 

 army of medical officials, who are to decree who shall 

 marry, and are to weigh us all in the scales of Hygeia, 

 and to label us " fit " or " unfit," " degenerate " or 

 " normal," as they think right according to official 

 judgement. All this is to be done by Act of Parlia- 

 ment. Such schemes are very pretty on paper, and 

 very plausible when discussed over a round table 

 after dinner. But it is in the working of them, when 

 we come into contact with all sorts and degrees of 

 realities, that their latent and inherent dangers, 

 impossibilities, imperfections, incongruities, and 

 absurdities become painfully and obtrusively patent. 

 Here, in Dr. Rutherfurd's pedigree, we have a con- 

 crete case. Dr. Rutherfurd, who personally knows 

 some of the people recorded in it, finds it difficult to 

 say who are normal or degenerate. He prefers, 

 therefore, not to indicate them in any precise way. 

 But when a self-satisfied body of medical officials in 

 the discharge of their statutory functions, have to 

 say whether a given person shall or shall not marry, 

 whether this man, woman, or child is or is not sound, 

 they have got to be specific. No vague general 

 principles, floating nebulous in an optimistic and 

 otiose atmosphere, will suffice. Persons are very con- 

 crete things, and their passions and desires are persist- 

 ently imperative. It is unsafe and unstatesmanlike 

 to dismiss either by definition or statute, laboriously 

 formulated amid many confficting doubts, impossible 

 of certain interpretation by the wisest judges, and 

 incapable of general enforcement upon the people. 



