THE METHOD OF EUGENICS g 



to determine and it can be determined only by the results 

 of breeding. To get at the facts it is necessary to study 

 the progeny of human marriages. Now marriage can be 

 and is looked at from many points of view. In novels, as 

 the climax of human courtship; in law, largely as a union 

 of two lines of property-descent; in society, as fixing a 

 certain status ; but in eugenics, which considers its biological 

 aspect, marriage is an experiment in breeding; and the 

 children, in their varied combinations of characters, give 

 the result of the experiment. ( That marriage should still 

 be only an experiment in breeaing, while the breeding of 

 many animals and plants has been reduced to a science, 

 is ground for reproach. \ Surely the human product is su- 

 perior to that of poultry; and as we may now predict with 

 precision the characters of the offspring of a particular 

 pair of pedigreed poultry so may it sometime be with man. 

 As we now know how to make almost any desired combina- 

 tion of the characters of guinea-pigs, chickens, wheats, and 

 cottons so may we hope to do with man. 



At present, matings, even among cultured people, seem 

 to be made at haphazard. Nevertheless there is some evi- 

 dence of a crude selection in peoples of all stations. Even 

 savages have a strong sense of personal beauty and a selec- 

 tion of marriage mates is influenced by this fact, as Darwin 

 has shown. It is, indeed, for the purpose of adding to their 

 personal attractiveness that savage women or men tattoo 

 the skin, bind up various parts of the body including the 

 feet, and insert ornaments into lips, nose and ears. Among 

 civiUzed peoples personal beauty still plays a part in selec- 

 tive mating. If, as is sometimes alleged, large hips in the 

 female are an attraction, then such a preference has the 

 eugenic result that it tends to make easy the birth of large, 

 well-developed babies, since there is probably a correlation 

 between the spread of the iliac bones of the pelvis and the 



