SELECTION: ORGANIC AND SOCIAL 235 



correctly written " on account of." 1 Unless we 

 are prepared to do nothing, saying with Sir Boyle 

 Roche, " What has posterity done for us ? " then we 

 must try " to replace Nature's selective death-rate 

 by a selective birth-rate." 2 In any case, we can 

 share in forming public opinion. 



Whymper, in his " Scrambles among the Alps," 

 says some forcible things about the marriage the 

 Church marriage of cretins who swarm in the 

 valley of Aosta and elsewhere. For many genera- 

 tions the strongest and healthiest peasants had to 

 go to the wars ; the idiotic and goitrous were left. 

 The disease may not be in itself hereditary, but 

 susceptibility to it is ; and in one village it was 

 said that all had a goitre except the young priest. 

 In any case the cretins of Aosta thrive and multiply, 

 and the consummation of the tragedy is that the 

 Church solemnises their union. 3 At one end we 

 have the celibacy of the clergy often remarkably 

 fine peasant thinkers and dreamers and the 

 celibacy of the most gentle and spiritual women 

 a segregation from the race of some of its finest 

 types at the other end the blessing of the goitrous 

 pair. Which things are a parable. 



Some sneer at eugenics as obtruding into the 

 sanctity of human relationships the counsels of 

 the farm-yard; but reflection will show that the 

 sanctity is heightened, not lessened, when the 

 solemn issues are realised. 



It is likewise quite certain that, whether we 



1 " Inheritance and Sociology," by W. C. D. Whetham, in The 

 Nineteenth Century and After (No. 363, Jan. 1909), pp. 74-90. 



2 Saleeby, "Parenthood and Race Culture" (1909). 



3 Of course one hopes it has been changed in the last few years. 

 It was true quite lately. 



