TABOO AND GENETICS 97 



general to regulate reproduction. The natural 

 sex desire proved sufficiently powerful and 

 general to still seek its object, even with the 

 group handicaps and regulations imposed to 

 meet the reproductive necessity. But contra- 

 ceptive knowledge, etc., has now become so 

 general that to regulate sex activity is no longer 

 to regulate reproduction. The taboo or " moral' 

 method of regulation has become peculiarly de- 

 generating to race quality, because the most 

 intelligent, rationalized individuals are least 

 affected by it. 



There is no turning back to control by igno- 

 rance. Even theoretically, the only way to stop 

 such a disastrous selection of the unfit would 

 be to rationalize reproduction — so that nobody 

 shall reproduce the species through sheer 

 ignorance of how to evade or avoid it. This 

 done, some type of social control must be 

 found which will enable civilized societies to 

 breed from their best instead of their worst 

 stock. Under the old scheme, already half 

 broken down, natural selection favours primitive 

 rather than civilized societies through decreased 

 birth-rates and survival of the unfit in the 

 latter. Even this is true only where the savage 

 groups are not interfered with by the civiUzed, 

 a condition rapidly disappearing through modern 

 occidental imperialism and the inoculation of 

 primitive peoples with " civihzed " diseases 



H 



