398 er NATURE AND LIFE. 
riage of women of distinction and high natural qualities 
with men more or less degraded. Happily, the tact and 
dignity instinctive in women, the natural sympathy they 
feel for superior natures, very often prevent them from 
stooping to humiliating or unsafe marriages, and almost 
always protect them from ill-assorted ones. ‘ Instead of 
yielding to passionate attractions,” says Sédillot, “ which 
easily disturb the judgment, let one ask, on seeing an 
agreeable person, whether one would wish to have sons and 
daughters like her, and the frequency of negative answers 
would be surprising. Certainly it would hardly be reason- 
abie to give up the advantages of the present for those of 
an uncertain futurity, but wisdom bids us reconcile them 
both, remembering the swiftness with which time flies, and 
the little worth of the passing hour, compared with the 
hopes and enjoyments of the future.” Sédillot adds that, 
in ordinary times, hygienic care and the moral evidence of 
the advantages of health and intelligence will suffice for 
the regeneration of a people. Unfortunately, France needs 
a more powerful and effectual source of elasticity, if she 
would rise again. She must bathe in the very spring of 
restoration and of life. She must plan the readiest means 
for preparing a future of energy and virtue for the genera- 
tions that are coming forward. At another time it would 
have perhaps seemed difficult or unwise to introduce into 
discussions relating to human reproduction such calcula- 
tions and such valuations as resemble those of zootechny, 
the art that has so long made practical use of selection. 
At this day such refined scruples must vanish before the 
warnings of necessity, telling us with its most solemn and 
earnest voice that not one blunder more must be committed.’ 
1 With respect to the outward indications that may give some idea of 
capacities, the remarkable researches of Quetelet deserve to be con- 
sulted, condensed in the late work published by him under the title of 
“ Anthropometry.” 

