362 THE TREND OF THE RACE 



tend, when isolated so that they do not interbreed or interbreed 

 only at rare intervals, to diverge in character. 



Membership in a religious organization acts as a barrier to 

 check free intercrossing. Catholics usually marry Catholics, 

 Jews generally marry Jews for reasons of religion as well as of 

 race, and Protestants not only generally marry Protestants, but 

 they commonly marry within their own particular sect. "In 

 Prussia," according to Mayo-Smith, "during the period 1875-90, 

 94.77 per cent of the Protestant men, 88.20 per cent of the Catho- 

 lic and 94.79 l>er cent of the Jewish, married women of the same 

 religious confession." 



Formerly the tendency to marry within the fold was much 

 stronger than now. The Quakers expelled members who married 

 into other denominations. And in denominations in which 

 outside marriages were not forbidden, the general sentiment 

 deterred most of the members from marrying persons of different 

 religious views. The customs of limiting marriage to members of 

 a group tends eventually to produce a uniform type with char- 

 acteristics somewhat different from those of other inbred groups. 

 A multiplicity of sects each discouraging marriage outside its own 

 organization tends to break up a people into a multiphcity of 

 types, each of which tends to become more and more uniform in 

 character as time goes on. Where sects are small in numbers this 

 may well produce noticable results in a few generations. 



When we compare the present influence of religion with the 

 influence which it is feasible for it to exert we cannot fail to 

 become conscious of a painful discrepancy. Protestant Chris- 

 tianity has practically failed to affect the practice of its adherents 

 in regard to one of the most fundamental of duties. And the 

 Catholic church which has attained a measure of success in 

 checking the restriction of births, gives indiscriminate encourage- 

 ment to the fecundity of all classes whether their heredity is good 

 or bad. The Right Rev. Monsignor W. F. Brown in setting forth 

 the attitude of the Church before the National Birth Rate Com- 

 mission declared that the State cannot lawfully forbid the mar- 

 riage of the physically defective or even the feeble-minded. If 



