FALLING IN LOVE 11 



ingly unlike parts, from the wide-f.preai effects of small 

 conditions, from the utter dying out of races like the Tas- 

 manians or the Paraguay Indians under circumstances 

 different from those with which their ancestors w^ere 

 familiar. \Vhat folly to interfere with a marvellous instinct 

 wliich now preserves this balance intact, in favour of an 

 untried artificial system which would probably wreck it as 

 helplessly as the modern system of higher education for 

 women is wrecking the maternal powers of the best class 

 in our English community ! 



Indeed, within the race itself, as it now exists, free 

 choice, aided by natural selection, is actually improving 

 eery good point, and is for ever weeding out all the occa- 

 sional failures and shortcomings of nature. For weakly 

 children, feeble children, stupid children, heavy children, 

 are undoubtedly born under this very regime of falling in 

 love, whose average results I believe to be so highly bene- 

 ficial. How is this ? Well, one has to take into considera- 

 tion two points in seeking for the solution of that obvious 

 problem. 



In the first place, no instinct is absolutely perfect. All 

 of them necessarily fail at some points. If on the average 

 they do good, they are sufficiently justified. Now the 

 material with which you have to start in this case is not 

 perfect. Each man marries, even in favourable circum- 

 stances, not the abstractly best adapted woman in the 

 world to supplement or counteract his individual pecuUar- 

 ities, but the best woman then and there obtainable for 

 him. The result is frequently far from perfect ; all I claim 

 is that it would be as bad or a good deal worse if somebody 

 else made the choice for him, or if he made the choice him- 

 self on abstract biological and ' eugenic ' principles. And, 

 indeed, the very existence of better and worse in the world 

 is a condition precedent of all upward evolution. Without 



