266 HEREDITY. 



height. You might lift a portion of the ability and 

 moral merit of the race by the measure here dis- 

 cussed ; but even then you would lift but a portion. 

 There would be, I suppose, more than half the nu- 

 merical size of the race below the average needed 

 by our tasks. What shall be done with that lower 

 portion of humanity? Is the problem concerning 

 its improvement by hereditary descent yet insoluble ? 



9. The superior has naturally a supreme affection 

 for the superior, and not for the inferior. 



10. Many writers hold that a physically and mor- 

 ally superior race united with an inferior one lowers 

 itself without raising the other, so that all such alli- 

 ances are a loss to civilization. 



The question is whether such marriages are justi- 

 fied by the subtle indications of which I have been 

 speaking with bated breath. If they are not, beware 

 how you cross the current of God's purposes in natu- 

 ral law ! You say the current is not very swift here. 

 But if it is a current which God urges on, no matter 

 how slowly it moves, it carries with it the infinities 

 and the eternities, and you must not try to stem the 

 force of what is deeper than all thought can sound, 

 and more powerful than imagination can measure. 

 Slight indications, you say ? My feeling is that the 

 instinct of the poets is right, and that the severest 

 philosophical thought on this topic is right. Each 

 proclaims precisely what many writers do in the 

 name of exact historical investigation, — that usually 

 there is a physical and a moral deterioration in the 

 case supposed. Of course I remember what inter 



