478 READINGS IN EVOLUTION, GENETICS, AND EUGENICS 
future. Under existing conditions non-eugenic considerations such 
as wealth, social position, etc., often enter into the preliminary negotia- 
tions of a marriage alliance, but an equally unromantic caution with 
reference to the physical, moral, and mental characters that make up 
the biological heritage of contracting parties is less usual. 
The scientific attitude is not necessarily opposed to the romantic 
way of looking at things. Science is simple ‘organized common 
sense,” and romance, that dispenses with this balance-wheel, although 
it may be entertaining and always exciting at first, is sure to be dis- 
appointing in the end. Marriages, may be ‘‘made in heaven,” but, 
as a matter of fact, children are born and have to be brought up on 
earth. It follows without saying that it will be much easier to stamp 
out bad germplasm when an educated sentiment becomes common 
among all people everywhere. 
d) SEGREGATION OF DEFECTIVES 
Persons with hereditary defects, such as epileptics, idiots, and 
certain criminals, who become wards of the state, should be segregated 
so that their germplasm may not escape to furnish additional burdens 
to society. ‘‘We have become so used to crime, disease and degener- 
acy that we take them for necessary evils. That they were in the 
world’s ignorance, is granted. That they must remain so, is denied” 
(Davenport). 
“The great horde of defectives once in the world have the right to 
live and enjoy as best they may whatever freedom is compatible with 
the lives and freedom of other members of society,”’ says Kellicott, but 
society had a right to protect itself against repetitions of hereditary 
blunders. 
There is one grave danger connected with the administration of 
our humane and commendable philanthropies toward the unfortunate, 
for it frequently happens that defectives are kept in institutions until 
they are sexually mature or are partly self-supporting, when they are 
liberated only to add to the burden of society by reproducing their like. 
Furthermore, if defectives of the same sort are collected together 
in the same institutions, unless sexual segregation is strictly main- 
tained, they may by the very circumstance of proximity tend to 
reproduce their kind just as defectives in any isolated community tend 
to multiply. 
David Starr Jordan cites the interesting case of cretinism which 
occurs in the valley of Aosta in northern Italy, to prove the wisdom 
