HUMAN CONSERVATION 325 



Certain of the United States have laws forbidding 

 the marriage of epileptics, habitual drunkards, paupers, 

 idiots, the insane, feeble-minded, and those afflicted 

 with venereal diseases. It would be well if such laws 

 were not only more uniform and widespread, but also 

 more rigidly enforced. 



The fact that much marriage taboo already exists 

 regardless of laws which effectually hinder or prevent 

 certain kinds of undesirable matings, forms a basis of 

 hope for future control. 



It is quite true that marriage laws in themselves do 

 not necessarily control human reproduction, for ille- 

 gitimacy is a factor that must always be reckoned with ; 

 nevertheless such laws do have an important influence 

 in regulating marriage and consequent reproduction. 



Marriage laws may, however, sometimes bring about 

 a deplorable result eugenically, as in the case of forced 

 marriage of sexual offenders in order to legalize the 

 offense and "save the woman's honor." To compel, 

 under the guise of legality, two defective streams of 

 germplasm to combine repeatedly and thereby result in 

 defective offspring just because the unfortunate event 

 happened once illegitimately, is fundamentally a mis- 

 take. Darwin says : "Except in the case of man him- 

 self hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst 

 animals to breed." 



C. AN EDUCATED SENTIMENT 



A far more effective means of restricting bad germ- 

 plasm than placing elaborate marriage laws upon our 



