142 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



we use every endeavour to postpone. Nature will not 

 even tolerate the unfit: we not only cherish them, 

 but strive to cultivate them, and the result of our 

 labours is to be found in our asylums for the blind, 

 the deaf, the idiotic, the insane, and in our prisons. 

 By all means let us comfort and protect the helpless, 

 it is our duty : but let us stop there. If the course 

 of Nature were not interfered with, legislation would 

 be uncalled for. 



For the present, however, we must do the best we 

 can to stay the ravages of this avoidable suffering 

 and poverty by education, by pointing out to the 

 people that the man or woman who knowingly takes 

 for husband or wife one so diseased as to rob the 

 children of a reasonable chance of health, is com- 

 mitting an outrage against God and Nature. 



