358 NATURE AND LIFE. 



riage of women of distinction and high natural qualities 

 with men more or less degraded. Happily, the tact and 

 dignity instinctive in women, the natural sympathy they 

 feel for superior natures, very often prevent them from 

 stooping to humiliating or unsafe marriages, and almost 

 always protect them from ill-assorted ones. " Instead of 

 yielding to passionate attractions," says Sedillot, " which 

 easily disturb the judgment, let one ask, on seeing an 

 agreeable person, whether one would wish to have sons and 

 daughters like her, and the frequency of negative answers 

 would be surprising. Certainly it would hardly be reason- 

 able to give up the advantages of the present for those of 

 an uncertain futurity, but wisdom bids us reconcile them 

 both, remembering the swiftness with which time flies, and 

 the little worth of the passing hour, compared with the 

 hopes and enjoyments of the future." Se'dillot adds that, 

 in ordinary times, hygienic care and the moral evidence of 

 the advantages of health and intelligence will suffice for 

 the regeneration of a people. Unfortunately, France needs 

 a more powerful and effectual source of elasticity, if she 

 would rise again. She must bathe in the very spring of 

 restoration and of life. She must plan the readiest means 

 for preparing a future of energy and virtue for the genera- 

 tions that are coming forward. At another time it would 

 have perhaps seemed difficult or unwise to introduce into 

 discussions relating to human reproduction such calcula- 

 tions and such valuations as resemble those of zootechny, 

 the art that has so long made practical use of selection. 

 At this day such refined scruples must vanish before the 

 warnings of necessity, telling us with its most solemn and 

 earnest voice that not one blunder more must be committed. 1 



1 With respect to the outward indications that may give some idea of 

 capacities, the remarkable researches of Quetelet deserve to be con- 

 sulted, condensed in the late work published by him under the title of 

 " Anthropometry." 



