CONTROL OF HEREDITY: EUGENICS 447 



tell says that a Harvard graduate has on the 

 average three-fourths of a son, a Vassar grad- 

 uate one-half of a daughter. 



At present early and fruitful marriages 

 among able and ambitious people are very un- 

 fashionable and are becoming increasingly im- 

 practicable. If society has any regard for its 

 own welfare all this must be changed. As 

 Galton has shown, the race that marries at 22 

 instead of 33 will possess the earth in two or 

 three centuries. 



The good of society demands that we re- 

 verse our methods of putting a premium upon 

 celibacy among our most gifted and ambitious 

 young men and women, and if monastic orders 

 and institutions are to continue they should 

 be open only to the eugenicially unfit. 



5. The Declining Birth Rate and the Death 

 of Families. — Among animals and plants in a 

 state of nature the number of individuals in 

 each species remains fairly constant from year 

 to year; that is, only enough young are born 

 and survive to take the places of mature indi- 

 viduals that die. But when a species is placed 

 in new and favorable conditions it may for a 



