CONTROL OF HEREDITY: EUGENICS 427 



hereditary defects should not marry at all is a 

 counsel of perfection. 



On the other hand it would be a dangerous 

 rule to propose that persons having really 

 serious hereditary defects should be mated 

 with those who are strong in those characters 

 on the ground that in general strength in a 

 character is dominant over weakness. It has 

 been suggested that a normal man who marries 

 a feeble-minded woman would have only nor- 

 mal children, since both genius and feeble- 

 mindedness seem to be recessive when mated 

 with mediocrity or normality. But in all such 

 cases the weakness is not neutralized or re- 

 moved but merely concealed in the offspring 

 and is therefore the more dangerous. If a man 

 chooses to marry a feeble-minded woman he at 

 least does so with his eyes open and he need not 

 be deceived. But the normal and perhaps 

 capable children of such a union carry the taint 

 concealed in their germ plasm and if they 

 should be mated with other normal persons 

 carrying a similar taint some of their children 

 would be feeble-minded, and thus the sins of 

 the parents in mating weakness with strength 



