EUGENIST APPREHENSIONS 251 



Christianity early marriages are accepted as a 

 desirable accomplishment of providential inten- 

 tions, whereas Protestant Christianity cannot 

 actively encourage what it is ashamed to discuss. 

 It certainly seems dangerous for the welfare of a 

 community that its most successful classes should 

 not subscribe effectually to the next generation. 

 Delay in marrying is due very generally to a 

 natural reluctance to lower the standard of 

 comfort, and this feeling might be counteracted 

 could social usages be so far altered as to render 

 it incumbent upon grandparents to contribute 

 liberally towards the up-bringing of their grand- 

 children. But the older generation cannot be 

 expected cheerfully to accept the prospect of, say, 

 putting down a motor-car in order to educate child- 

 ren's children : they are the custodians of the canons 

 of social morality, and in these individualistic days 

 they will hardly be persuaded to modify them to 

 their disadvantage for the sake of posterity. 



There are, however, some consoling reflections. 

 It is by no means certain that the rich have any- 

 thing more to transmit in begetting descendants 

 than is possessed by the superior working classes, 

 and these are increasing in numbers as rapidly as 

 the very poor: their birth-rate is somewhat lower; 

 but so also is their death-rate. Experience offers 

 no ground for the belief that the culture of the 

 leisured classes is transmissible to their children by 

 inheritance. Would an Englishman, kidnapped by 

 savages in infancy, show any traces of civilized 

 polish in mind or in manners ? Are not children 

 born to most scrupulous parents endowed with 

 a propensity to lie and to steal ? Talents, or 

 aptitudes, may certainly be passed on by inherit- 

 ance, and the rich have often acquired their 

 wealth by abilities which in the interests of the 

 community might usefully be transmitted to the 



