96 TABOO AND GENETICS 



who are specialized to the former and adapted 

 to the latter, there is a growing tendency among 

 the most successful, individualized strains, to 

 choose the social and eschew the biological 

 functions. 



Racial degeneration is the result. Recorded 

 history is one succession of barbarous races, 

 under strong, primitive breeding conditions, 

 swamping their more civilized, individualized 

 neighbours, adopting the dysgenic ways of 

 civilization and then being swamped in their 

 turn by barbarians. This is especially pronounced 

 in our own times because popularized biological 

 and medical knowledge makes it possible for 

 a tremendous class of the most successful and 

 enlightened to avoid reproduction without fore- 

 going sex activit3^ 



In primitive groups, a " moral " control 

 which kept all women at reproduction was 

 neither eugenic nor dysgenic unless accompanied 

 by systematic destruction of the least fit children. 

 By " moral " control is meant the use of taboo, 

 prejudice, religious abhorrence for certain acts 

 and the hke. The carefully nurtured moral 

 ideas about sex and reproduction simply repre- 

 sent the system of coercion which groups have 

 found most effective in enforcing the division of 

 reproductive .^ and other activities among the 

 individual members. When this social machin- 

 ery grew up, to regulate sexual activity was in 



