234 THE CONTEOL OF LIFE 



or impair the racial qualities of future generations, 

 either physically or mentally." It is often spoken of 

 with an indulgent smile, as if it was an amiable weakness 

 to be interested in an ideal which yielded the Hebrew 

 prophets and is an ancient art in China. There is no 

 difficulty in vindicating the ideal ; the difficulty is in 

 regard to "practicable Eugenics. We cannot here do 

 more than make a few suggestions : — 



(1) While men and women cannot select their parents, 

 they do to some extent select their partners in life, and 

 in this subtle process it is possible that an enthusiasm 

 for health in the widest and highest sense may have an 

 influence in a eugenic direction. 



(2) If men and women who are handicapped by serious 

 constitutional unsoundness permit themselves to marry, 

 they should not permit themselves to be parents. No 

 one can contemplate without grave regret the spoiling of 

 more or less good stock by the introduction of defects 

 like deaf-mutism, or predispositions to well-defined 

 mental instability, or to certain forms of diabetes and 

 epilepsy. But it is a little suspicious that it is always 

 the other fellow, not oneself, that one thinks of as not a 

 good parent ! Professor G. H. Parker expresses the whole- 

 some dread that people have of inquisitions — ^scientific 

 or otherwise. " My neighbours are charitably inclined, 

 but some of them, I am sure, would give what seemed 

 to them good reasons for not having my particular 

 personality repeated in the future, and yet, with all 

 due respect to the welfare of society, I confess to a 

 slight measure of feeling that I be allowed some indi- 



