TABOO AND GENETICS 105 



yet functional for sex. Some have no sex desires 

 at all, some no craving for or attachment to 

 children, some neither of these. It is a question 

 still to be solved whether some of them ought, 

 in the interest of the race, to be encouraged to 

 reproduce themselves. In less individualized 

 primitive society, seclusion, taboo and ignorance 

 coerced them into reproduction. Any type of 

 control involving the inculcation of " moral " 

 ideas is open to the objection that it may work 

 on those who should not reproduce themselves 

 as well as those who should. 



In a sense, this problem will tend to solve it- 

 self. With the substitution of the more 

 rationalized standards of self-interest and group 

 loyalty for the irrational taboo control of 

 reproductive activities, there will be as much 

 freedom for women to choose whether they will 

 accept maternity as there is now, in the period 

 of transition from the old standards to the new. 

 The chief difference will be that many of the 

 artificial forces which are acting as barriers to 

 motherhood at the present time — as for example 

 the economic handicap involved — will be re- 

 moved, and woman's choice will therefore be 

 more entirely in harmony with her native 

 instinctive tendencies. Thus those women 

 endowed with the most impelling desire for 

 children will, as a rule, have the largest number. 

 In all probabihty their offspring will inherit 



