3 o6 HEREDITY AND DISEASE 



(7) As to the diffusion of disease by the intermarriage of 

 badly tainted with relatively healthy families, we have this in 

 our own hands, and we need not whine over it. The basis 

 of preferential mating is not unalterable ; in fact, we know that 

 it sways hither and thither from age to age. Possible marriages 

 are every day prohibited or refrained from for the absurdest of 

 reasons ; there is no reason why they should not be prohibited 

 or refrained from for the best of reasons — the welfare of our race. 



By the education of conscience on a scientific basis there is 

 already arising a wholesome prejudice against the marriage and 

 especially the intermarriage of subjects in whom there is a 

 strong hereditary bias to certain diseases — such as epilepsy and 

 diabetes, to take two very different instances. Is it Utopian 

 to hope that this will extend with increasing knowledge, and 

 that the ethical consciousness of the average man will come 

 more and more to include in its varied content " a feeling of 

 responsibility for the healthfulness of succeeding generations " ? 



The argument always used against deliberate preferential 

 mating on a eugenic basis is that our ignorance is immense. 

 And this must be frankly admitted. Yet there are some things 

 that we do know. We know that " the manifestly syphilitic 

 subject who marries before he is thoroughly and definitely cured 

 commits a crime, not only because there is the possibility — 

 indeed, the probability — that he infects his wife, but also because 

 he deliberately [vcraussichtlich] begets syphilitic children. . . . 

 The Eugenic office of the future, which will have to test applicants 

 for a marriage-licence, not merely juristically or socially, but 

 also biologically and medically, to decide as to their fitness for 

 legitimate reproduction, will have no difficulty in refusing per- 

 mission to uncured syphiliticus and incurable drunkards, and 

 perhaps also to those who are patently tubercular " (freely 

 translated from Martius, 1905, p. 24). 



That the best general constitutions should be mated is the 

 first rule of good breeding. 



