326 GENETICS 



statute-books is to educate public sentiment and to 

 foster a popular eugenic conscience, in the absence 

 of which the safeguards of the law must forever be 

 largely without avail since our best hope lies not in 

 compulsion but in voluntary effort. 



Such a sentiment already generally exists to a large 

 extent with respect to incest, and the marriage of 

 persons as noticeably defective as idiots or those 

 afflicted with insanity, and also in America with respect 

 to miscegenation, but a cautious and intelligent ex- 

 amination of the more obscure defective traits, exhib- 

 ited in the somatoplasms of the various members of 

 ^families in question, is largely an ideal of the future. 

 Under existing conditions non-eugenic considerations 

 such as wealth, social position, etc., often enter into 

 the preliminary negotiations of a marriage alliance, 

 but an equally unromantic caution with reference to 

 the physical, moral, and mental characters that make 

 up the biological heritage of contracting parties is 

 less usual. 



The scientific attitude is not necessarily opposed to 

 the romantic way of looking at things. If the bandage 

 across the eyes of blind Cupid is allowed to slip a little 

 in so important and far-reaching an operation as 

 "falling in love" it is perhaps just as well. The dia- 

 logue in "Two Gentlemen of Verona" between Julia 

 and Lucetta is quite to the point where the eager and 

 curious Julia says to her maid, 



"But say, Lucetta, now we are alone, 

 Woulds't thou counsel me to fall in love ? " 



