SELECTION: ORGANIC AND SOCIAL 235 



correctly written " on account of." ^ Unless we 

 are prepared to do nothing, saying with Sir Boyle 

 Eoche, " What has posterity done for us ? " then we 

 must try " to replace Nature's selective death-rate 

 by a selective birth-rate." * In any case, we can 

 share in forming public opinion. 



Whymper, in his " Scrambles among the Alps," 

 says some forcible things about the marriage — the 

 Church marriage — of cretins who swarm in the 

 valley of Aosta and elsewhere. For many genera- 

 tions the strongest and healthiest peasants had to 

 go to the wars ; the idiotic and goitrous were left. 

 The disease may not be in itself hereditary, but 

 susceptibility to it is ; and in one village it was 

 said that all had a goitre except the young priest. 

 In any case the cretins of Aosta thrive and multiply, 

 and the consummation of the tragedy is that the 

 Church solemnises their union.* At one end we 

 have the ceUbacy of the clergy — often remarkably 

 fine peasant thinkers and dreamers — and the 

 ceUbacy of the most gentle and spiritual women — 

 a segregation from the race of some of its finest 

 types— at the other end the blessing of the goitrous 

 pair. Which things are a parable. 



Some sneer at eugenics as obtruding into the 

 sanctity of human relationships the coimsels of 

 the farm-yard; but reflection will show that the 

 sanctity is heightened, not lessened, when the 

 solemn issues are reahsed. 



It is likewise quite certain that, whether we 



> " Inheritance and Sociology," by W. C. D. Whetham, in Tht 

 Nineteemth Century and After (No. 363, Jan. 1909), pp. 74-90. 



» Saleeby, " Parenthood and Race Culture " (1909). 



3 Of course one hopes it has been changed in the last few years. 

 It wM true quite lately. 



