HEREDITY IN INSANITY. 89 



stances is a moral wrong, and it must quickly be made 

 a legal one. The Legislature must step forward and say 

 that deception of this kind, deliberately practised, as 

 it too frequently is, with a view to marriage, shall be 

 sufficient ground for a nullification of the marriage 

 contract. If a bill were at present brought forward so 

 to alter the law it would receive the united support 

 of the scientific and legal schools of thought. 



Unhappily, however, such deception is not always 

 necessary ; for, strange as it may appear to some, we 

 know it to be a fact that many, well knowing the 

 family history of the tainted one, disregard it. This 

 disregard arises from various causes. In some it is 

 the outcome of ignorance, and here from education 

 we may anticipate good results. In some others it 

 arises from gross carelessness, which is nothing short 

 of criminal. But in the great majority of those cases 

 in which the laws of Nature are disregarded, and more 

 especially amongst the educated classes, the offenders 

 are guided solely by sordid and selfish motives, such 

 as social elevation and love of wealth. In all civi- 

 lised countries, in the highest families not excepting 

 royalty itself we find men and women, for their 

 own personal aggrandisement, deliberately, we might 

 almost say with malice aforethought, entering into 

 marriages which can only end in disaster to the 

 luckless children. Some puling sentimentalists, who 

 cannot plead ignorance, assert that they are led by 

 love's legendary single hair, but such people are not 

 to be believed. A bowstring would not drag a vigorous 

 7 



