INSANITY AND ALCOHOLISM. 87 



on ; but if we remove selective influences without re- 

 placing them by others, then racial decay is certainly 

 and inevitably upon us. At the present time people 

 with strong strains of insanity or phthisis marry 

 freely. The dangers are to a certain extent realised, 

 but these are generally overcome by the power either 

 of personal attraction or dowry. A man may be 

 summoned for neglecting to send his son to school, 

 but at present there is no strong public feeling against 

 the knowingly begetting a son who all his life may 

 suffer from weak lungs or brain, and hence obvious 

 disease is no bar in the marriage market. 



How it is that the Production of Children by Diseased 

 Parents is tolerated. 



We cannot wonder at this state of things when we 

 recall the fact that in less advanced times than the 

 present a rapidly recruited population was often the 

 determining cause of a nation's continued existence. 

 The depopulation produced by war and zymotic dis- 

 ease was often so dreadful that nations with great 

 fertility alone survived ; and thus it came about that 

 all minor questions were sunk in the one great neces- 

 sity, namely, that of keeping the population large 

 enough to resist extinction or to effect foreign con- 

 quest. 



Added to this, most of the sickly diseased offspring 

 died in infancy as a result of improper feeding or 



