80 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY 



inheritance in this respect and has advanced to a high 

 civilization under the process. 



But the failure of such civilized states as Athens 

 and Rome, Spain and Venice, to withstand the insidious 

 process of racial decay is more difficult to account for. 

 One point in common that preceded the fall of these 

 civilizations was the decline in the sanctity of family 

 life and the restriction of the birth-rate among the able 

 and more competent classes, who were the trustees of 

 the most valuable racial qualities. 



As long as Rome remained under the control of a 

 definite homogeneous race, the family was treated as 

 the social unit, and patriotism and self-sacrifice, based 

 on devotion to the family and the home, burned with a 

 steady flame a model to all time. But Rome became 

 a cosmopolitan capital, drawing in from all nations 

 men who demanded the privileges of citizenship 

 without being able to bear its burdens or willing 

 to submit to its limitations. Eventually the purity 

 of the race was lost, and with it vanished the definite 

 character of the people and the social structure of 

 the nation. 



Both in Athens and in Rome, during the period of 

 splendour which ushered in their decay, the dearth of 

 children in the patrician and upper classes, and others 

 who successively came to the front to fill the empty 

 places, was regarded with alarm by the responsible 

 statesmen of the day, and the tendency for the best 

 women to remain if not unmarried at least childless, 

 or to find occupation and interest in the political and 

 literary spheres of life, was recognized to be a source 

 of national danger. 



