20 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



begun before the degeneration has become too deep and 

 persisted in for generations, that a blighted family can 

 rise to the level of health and hope to live in posterity. 

 In the family cited above an attempt was made to 

 continue an unfit variety of the human race, with what 

 result we have seen, viz., a refusal of Nature to continue 

 the variety. Of course it is only where the natural 

 laws are interfered with, as they are in civilised life, 

 that such could have occurred. In the natural state 

 this family, in all likelihood, would have been stamped 

 out two generations earlier, and the nineteen descen- 

 dants, whose lives were but a cheerless procession to 

 the grave, would never have existed. 



In natural life the necessarily fatal type is reached 

 much earlier than under civilisation, and consequently 

 the standard of health is distinctly higher among bar- 

 barous than among civilised peoples. Even such an 

 apparently innocent abnormality as, say, colour-blind- 

 ness cannot be cultivated in the natural state, for the 

 first individual bearing the degenerate character would 

 undoubtedly fall a victim to some enemy because of that 

 character, and so the variety would be lost. Of course, 

 in civilised life the necessarily fatal type is ultimately 

 attained in every case where reversion does not take 

 place, in spite of all man can do to stay or prevent that 

 consummation. Thus Nature ultimately rights herself 

 in all cases by setting her veto upon the perpetuation 

 of disease, and were it not for the suffering experienced 

 before oblivion is reached, nothing need be said ; the 

 erring might be left to their fate. But this suffering, 



