14 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE, 



who proposed to increase his flock or herd from animals 

 whose ancestors had suffered or died one after another 

 from some common disease ? Who is he who does not 

 choose his finest animals for breeding purposes, and if 

 an otherwise superior animal have a fault, endeavour 

 by judicious " crossing" to lessen, and in time eradicate, 

 that fault ? But while we thus study with jealous care 

 what shall be the natural inheritance of our horses, 

 cattle, and hounds, we give not a passing thought as 

 to what may be that of our children. Animal passion, 

 sickly sentiment, or the desire for rank or wealth, is 

 permitted to jostle aside our reason, and even some of 

 us whose business in life it is to improve the breed of 

 some useful animal by careful selection may be found 

 at the same time rearing a family of children from a 

 mother who is a member of a family saturated with 

 disease. While we practically ignore this law in rela- 

 tion to the human family, we assuredly never forget its 

 great influence in the case of the beasts that perish. 

 Why ? Is not man worth more than many brutes ? 



Of this refusal, this obstinate refusal on the part of 

 man to recognise the effect of this law of hereditary 

 transmission upon the human family, Dr. Maudsley 

 observes: "Because it has been the fashion to look 

 upon an individual as if he were the product of an 

 independent creative act and a self -sufficient being 

 because men commonly look not beyond a single link 

 in the chain of causation therefore it has been impos- 

 sible hitherto to uproot the erroneous notion, explicitly 

 declared or implicitly held, that each one is endowed 



