PROBLEMS OF RURAL SOCIAL LIFE 337 



perverted social ideals are likely to prove disastrous to the 

 race, because they lead the capable young men and women 

 to : : ollow those other ambitions and to abandon that of the 

 family builder. 



The family builder. The general abandonment of the ambi- 

 tion of the family builder will prove disastrous to the race for 

 several reasons. In the first place, it leads capable and ambitious 

 young men to choose their wives for other reasons than their 

 capacity as mothers. The man whose ideal of life centers in 

 individual gratification will, if he is successful enough in an 

 economic sense to give him some opportunity for choice in the 

 matter, choose a wife on the ground of her capacity to minister 

 to his vanity or to his sensuality; to choose one, for example, who 

 will help him in fashionable society, whose face will please his 

 fancy, etc. The man whose dominant ambition is to found a 

 splendid family, or to achieve immortality by leaving behind him 

 a family of capable children, well trained and disciplined for the 

 battle of life, and dominated by high ideals of morality, patri- 

 otism, etc., will choose a wife who is capable of helping him to 

 achieve that ambition. She must be sound physically and capa- 

 ble of bearing and nursing healthy children ; she must also be 

 possessed of unusual mental power, and therefore capable of 

 transmitting that mental power to her children ; and, finally, she 

 must be dominated by high ideals of morality and social service, 

 in order that she may give her time and strength unsparingly to 

 the task of training her children for good citizenship. When the 

 family-building ambition dominates the people, this is the kind 

 of woman who will be most sought after in marriage, who will 

 least frequently remain unmarried and childless, who will marry 

 earliest and therefore have the longest child-bearing period, and 

 who will get the most capable and vigorous husbands, and there- 

 fore- bear the most capable and vigorous children. Where dif- 

 ferent ideals prevail, a different type of woman will be most 





