TABOO AND GENETICS 103 



female could not have borne the hundredth part 

 of his colts. This simply means that the effort 

 or individual cost of impressing his characters 

 upon the new generation is less than one one- 

 hundredth that required of a female. 



Among domestic animals this is made use of 

 to multiply the better males to the exclusion 

 of the others, a valuable biological expedient 

 which we are denied in human groups because 

 it would upset all our social institutions. So 

 we do the next best thing and make the males 

 do more than half in the extra-biological activi- 

 ties of society, since they are by their structure 

 prevented from having an equal share in the 

 reproductive burden. This is an absolutely 

 necessary equation, and there will always be 

 some sort of division of labour on the basis of it. 



Since reproduction is a group, not an indi- 

 vidual, necessity, whatever economic burden it 

 entails must eventually be assumed by society 

 and divided up among the individuals, like the 

 cost of war or any other group activity. Ideally, 

 then, from the standpoint of democracy, every 

 individual, male or female, should bear his share 

 as a matter of course. This attitude toward 

 reproduction, as an individual duty but a group 

 economic burden, would lead to the solution of 

 most of the problems involved. Negative eugen- 

 ics should be an immediate assumption — if the 

 state must pay for offspring, the quality will 



