282 Human Physiology. 



to sensuality and lust is a desecration of a holy institution, 

 and somewhat worse in its consequences than promiscuous 

 profligacy, for the consequences of that may not fall upon 

 one's children and posterity. 



There are many persons who have no right to marry. There 

 should be a kind and amount of love that will justify and 

 sanctify such a relation. There should be a pure motive, and 

 a fixed intention of making the relation what it ought to be to 

 husband, wife, and children. There should be a reasonable 

 assurance of the power to provide for a family. There should 

 be that amount of health that freedom from bodily and mental 

 disease that physical and moral constitution which will give a 

 reasonable prospect of children whose lives will be a blessing 

 to themselves and to society. 



Where there is deformity of body or an unhappy pecu- 

 liarity of mind or temper liable to be inherited, people should 

 not marry, or if they live together, should resign the uses 

 of marriage. People should conscientiously refrain from propa- 

 gating hereditary diseases. Persons near of kin are wisely 

 forbidden to marry, for there is in such cases the liability of 

 imperfect generation the production of blind, deaf, idiotic or 

 insane offspring. The laws and ecclesiastical regulations re- 

 specting marriages have in almost every case a scientific basis. 

 And in respect to second marriages, it is undoubtedly true that 

 a man may have acquired by the close intimacy of marriage 

 such a near relationship to his wife that it is best, as a general 

 rule, that he should not marry her sister, or other near relation. 



Should marriage be for life? As a rule, undoubtedly. Every 

 real, proper, true marriage must be. It takes a lifetime for a 

 husband and wife to make a home, and rear, and educate, and 

 provide for a family of children. But how if people make mis- 

 takes and find that thev are not suitably married ? These are 

 mistakes very difficult to remedy. If a man, after deliberately 

 making his choice of a woman, ceases to love her, how can he 



