CHAPTER XII

SELECTION THROUGH MARRIAGE

=Historical evidence of control of marriage: Westermarck's evidence.=--To begin with the most recent refutation of the doctrine that marriage selection is uncontrollable, one may quote from the inaugural lecture delivered by Dr. Westermarck in December, 1907, on his appointment as Professor of Sociology in the University of London. He said:--

“For instance, when the suggestion has been made that the law should step in and prevent unfit individuals from contracting marriage, the objection has at once been raised that any such measure would be impracticable. Now we find that many savages have tried the experiment and succeeded. Mr. Im Thurn tells us that among the wild Indians of Guiana, a man, before he is allowed to choose a wife, must prove that he can do a man's work and is able to support himself and his family. In various Bechuana and Kaffir tribes, according to Livingstone, a youth is prohibited from marrying until he has killed a rhinoceros. Among the Dyaks of Borneo no one can marry until he has in his possession a certain number of human skulls. Among the Arabs of Upper Egypt a man must undergo an ordeal of whipping by the relatives of his bride, in order to test his courage; and if he wishes to be considered worth having, he must receive the chastisement, which is sometimes exceedingly severe, with an expression of enjoyment.

“I do not say that these particular methods are worthy of slavish imitation, but the principle underlying them is certainly excellent, and especially the fact that they are recognised and enforced by custom shows that it has been quite possible among many people to prohibit certain unfit individuals from marrying. The question naturally arises whether, after all, something of the same kind may not be possible among ourselves.”

=Mr. Galton's evidence.=--But Mr. Galton himself, with his characteristic thoroughness, and in full recognition of the fact that this young science must meet ignorant as well as other objections, read before the Sociological Society[50] a paper entitled “Restrictions in Marriage,” with special reference to the objection “that human nature would never brook interference with the freedom of marriage.... How far have marriage restrictions proved effective, when sanctified by the religion of the time, by custom and by law? I appeal from armchair criticism to historical facts.” Mr. Galton then proceeds to quote seven forms of restriction in marriage which have actually been practised--monogamy, endogamy, exogamy, Australian marriages, taboo, prohibited degrees and celibacy. He shows how powerful under each of these heads is the influence of “immaterial motives” upon marriage selection, how they may all become hallowed by religion, accepted as custom and enforced by law. “Persons who are born under their various rules, live under them without any objection. They are unconscious of their restrictions as we are unaware of the tension of the atmosphere.” In many cases the establishment of monogamy and the prohibition of polygamy “has been due not to any natural instinct against the practice, but to consideration of social well-being.” “It was penal for a Greek to marry a barbarian, for a Roman patrician to marry a plebeian, for a Hindoo of one caste to marry one of another caste, and so forth. Similar restrictions have been enforced in multitudes of communities, even under the penalty of death.” Cases from ancient Jewish law are quoted; and, to take a very different case, that of the marriage rule amongst the Australian bushmen, it is shown that “the cogency of this rule is due to custom, religion and law, and is so strong that nearly all Australians would be horrified at the idea of breaking it.” Passing further on, one need offer no excuse for quoting, regarding marriage in general, the following words of the founder of eugenics:--“_The institution of marriage as now sanctified by religion and safeguarded by law in the more highly civilised nations, may not be ideally perfect, nor may it be universally accepted in future times, but it is the best that has hitherto been devised for the parties primarily concerned, for their children, for home life, and for society._”

Mr. Galton then proceeds to show how extensive are the restrictions in marriage already recognised and practised amongst ourselves and quite contentedly accepted. He proves also that our objection to marriage within prohibited degrees depends mainly upon what he calls immaterial considerations, and adds “it is quite conceivable that a non-eugenic marriage should hereafter excite no less loathing than that of a brother and sister would do now.” Then, in allusion to the possibility “of a whole-hearted acceptance of eugenics as a national religion ... the thorough conviction by a nation that no worthier object exists for man than the improvement of his own race,” Mr. Galton shows from the history of conventual life what abundant evidence there is “of the power of religious authority in directing and withstanding the tendencies of human nature towards freedom in marriage.” This paper was discussed by no less than twenty-six authorities, British and Continental, and in his reply Mr. Galton observes that not one of them impugns his main conclusion “that history tells how restrictions in marriage, even of an excessive kind, have been contentedly accepted very widely, under the guidance of what I called immaterial motives.” Lastly, we may note Mr. Galton's admirable distinction between the two stages of love, “that of slight inclination and that of falling thoroughly into love, for it is the first of these rather than the second that I hope the popular feeling of the future will successfully resist. Every match-making mother appreciates the difference. If a girl is taught to look upon a class of men as tabooed, whether owing to rank, creed, connections or other causes, she does not regard them as possible husbands and turns her thoughts elsewhere. The proverbial ‘Mrs. Grundy’ has enormous influence in checking the marriages she considers indiscreet.”

Surely all the foregoing suffices to show, first, that eugenics or race-culture is compatible with marriage, and secondly, that it is compatible with the love of the sexes--two conclusions of the most cardinal and fundamental importance. This importance it is, and the obstinate stupidity of critics of a kind, which must excuse me for having devoted so much space to propositions which the thoughtful reader would naturally have arrived at for himself.

=The present influence of marriage on race-culture.=--We must turn now from the past to the present aspect of the question, viz., the actual relation of marriage to eugenics at the present day. Its nature is very much disputed. On the one hand, there are those who see in our present methods what has elsewhere been called reversed selection--that is to say, an anti-eugenic process, involving the mating of the least desirable. On the other hand, there are many conservative critics who, starting from a general opposition to any new thing, such as eugenics, maintain that we are doing very well as we are, and that, without any conscious interference, as they call it--as if there were no such interference--selection by marriage is actually working for the eugenic end. Dr. Maudsley, for instance, is “not sure but that nature in its own blind impulsive way does not manage things better than we can by any light of reason”: an astounding opinion from the veteran pioneer who has devoted so many decades to successfully modifying natural processes by the light of his own splendid reason!

This most important question, as to what is actually happening within the limits of marriage, may legitimately be regarded as substantially equivalent to the question of the extent and nature of selection, for good or for evil, as it occurs in society to-day. If we remember that an overwhelming proportion of children are born in wedlock, that the death-rate of illegitimate children is gigantic, whilst the illegitimate birth-rate is generally falling, we shall be fully entitled to assume that the answer to the one question is the answer to the other; in a word, if under the present conditions of selection for marriage we find a eugenic tendency or an anti-eugenic tendency or a mere neutrality, the answer will be, _on the whole_, the approximate answer to the larger question as to the present state of selection for parenthood and therefore of our racial prospects, marriage or no marriage. The conclusion which we shall maintain is that _both forms of selection occur in society to-day_--the selection of the desirable and the selection of the undesirable. We shall go ludicrously wrong if we agree, with one party, that society in general to-day exhibits reversed selection; or, with the second party, that everything is going on admirably on the whole; or, with the third party, which jumbles the whole mass of facts and tendencies, and declares that there is no process of selection of any kind occurring in society to-day--an opinion which, in the face of disease, the enormous premature death-rate, and the fact that whilst vast numbers of women are unmarried, the choice of women for marriage does not occur by lot, beggars comment; is a girl with a birth-mark covering half her face, or a nose destroyed by transmissible disease, as likely to marry as a “beauty”? If not, surely we actually select to-day for beauty and therefore for whatever beauty depends upon--for instance, health. But really it cannot be necessary to deal seriously with the proposition that no selection occurs in society to-day.

Let us attempt to state clearly the point at issue. There is granted, in the first place, that by far the greater part of all parenthood, in civilised and uncivilised communities alike, occurs within the limits of marriage; to which may be added that, owing to the excessive death-rate of illegitimate children, the proportion of effective parenthood, so to say, that occurs within the limits of marriage is even larger; and this intervention of marriage, and any selection that may be involved in it, steadily recur from generation to generation. Thus even those born outside wedlock will nevertheless be selected for parenthood, on their own part, mainly by the selective factors in marriage.

=Selection by marriage has the last word.=--It follows, then, though the fact is almost constantly ignored by eugenic writers, that selection by marriage in effect has the last word. Thus supposing that all other forms of selection, depending upon, for instance, the various causes of death amongst the immature, were what we call reversed selection; or supposing that, as is actually the case, society permitted large numbers of the so-called unfit to survive,--even so, marriage selection (if it meant that many or most of these were rejected by it) would control and correct the dangerous tendency. On all hands, scientific and unscientific, we have writers telling us of the disastrous multiplication of the unfit. Such multiplication does occur and is disastrous. Yet hitherto they have failed to recognise that if--to take an extreme case--all these unfit are rejected by marriage selection--that is to say, do not themselves become parents--this alarming multiplication is, after all, not a persistent factor in racial change, but merely the throwing up or throwing aside in each generation of a certain number of undesirables _whose breed gets no further_. Of course there would be much less urgent need for eugenics if this last were wholly and happily the case. Our object, indeed, is to make it the case: but so long as selection by marriage exists,--and its occurrence is palpably indisputable--_it is a serious flaw in the common argument to assume that the production and preservation of undesirables necessarily involves their own parenthood in due course_. It is necessary that strict statistical enquiry be made on this point. It would show, I believe, that the marriage-rate _and the birth-rate_ amongst the _grossly_ unfit is much lower than that of the general community, or, in other words, that the influence and value of selection by marriage (which, as we have shown, is in effect selection for parenthood, the only selection that ultimately matters) has not yet been fully appreciated. I very strongly incline to the view that if this protective factor were not constantly at work, the “multiplication of the unfit” would long ago have led to the destruction of every civilised nation on the earth: they would have swamped us long ago. Indeed, the proposition may be laid down that, supreme and indispensable as are the services of marriage to race-culture, in its protection of motherhood, and the support of motherhood by fatherhood, probably the services of marriage as in effect the working of sexual selection are worthy of being rated almost, if not quite, as high.

=Sexual selection is certainly true of mankind.=--Before adducing the outlines of the evidence in favour of marriage as an instrument of selection, it may be well to point out that here we are really discussing what Darwin called “sexual selection,” modified by the psychology and peculiar characters of mankind. We must protect ourselves from the critics who will remind us that sexual selection is very largely discredited to-day, rather more than a generation after Darwin's enunciation of it in _The Descent of Man_ (1871). The controversy regarding sexual selection as the producer of feathers and markings and song, and so forth, amongst the lower animals, is fortunately quite irrelevant to our present discussion, which is concerned with mankind. We can afford to note with equanimity the observation that, in lower species, no mature female goes unmated, for instance; the fact remains that in the case of mankind a very considerable percentage of women remain unmarried. The case is similar as regards the male sex. In short, one may declare that, whether or not sexual selection is possible, or occurs, or accomplishes anything, in the case of the lower animals, it palpably and patently is possible, and does occur, amongst mankind, and especially amongst civilised peoples, in the form of selection by or for marriage--which, as we have seen, is in effect selection for parenthood. Let us first note the statistical evidence regarding marriage-selection of health and energy.

=Spencer on marital longevity.=--We are all aware that married people live longer, on the average, than unmarried people, the conclusion being, “of course,” that marriage is good for the health. But some are taken and others left in this respect, and if, for any conceivable reason, health is a factor making for selection by marriage, that may be a real explanation, in whole or in part, of the longer life of married people. Considering the risks to life involved in motherhood, the superior longevity of married as compared with unmarried women would be incomprehensible except on some such assumption. Yet it is the fact, so imperfect still is the entry of the idea of selection into the popular and even the expert mind, that the superior longevity of married people is still constantly asserted to mean that marriage makes for long life; every year, when the statistics are printed, this argument may be seen in the newspapers, and I remember encountering it in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, to my utter astonishment.

This uncritical conclusion was disposed of by the author of the phrase “the survival of the fittest”--appropriately enough--more than thirty years ago. If the reader will turn to Herbert Spencer's _Study of Sociology_ (a masterpiece which may be commended to the publishers for the purpose of indexing--twenty editions without an index are too many) he will find in Chapter V. a discussion of this question. It is an astonishing thing that though Spencer conclusively exposed it a generation ago, the childish fallacy is still apparently as flourishing as ever. He shows how the greater healthfulness of married life was supposed to be proved by Dr. Stark from comparison of the rates of mortality among the married and among the celibate. Then no less an authority than M. Bertillon went into the matter and contributed a paper called “The Influence of Marriage”--thus begging the question in its very title--to the Brussels Academy of Medicine. He showed that, from twenty-five to thirty years of age, several Continental countries being taken into the reckoning, “the mortality per thousand is 4 in married men, 10.4 in bachelors, and 22 in widows. This beneficial influence of marriage is manifested at all ages, being always more strongly marked in men than in women.” The absurdity of the apparent conclusion regarding widows is surely, as Spencer says, too obvious for discussion. But, for the rest, Spencer goes on to show that, in reality, “marriage and longevity are concomitant results of the same cause”--in other words, “that superior quality of organisation which conduces to long life also conduces to marriage. It is normally accompanied by a predominance of the instincts and emotions prompting marriage; there goes along with it that power[51] which can secure the means of making marriage practicable; and it increases the probability of success in courtship.” Spencer shows how “of men whose marriages depend upon getting the needful income,” those who will succeed are in general “the best, physically and mentally--the strong, the intellectually capable, the morally well-balanced.” He shows also how “women are attracted towards men of power--physical, emotional, intellectual; and obviously their freedom of choice leads them, in many cases, to refuse inferior samples of men; especially the malformed, the diseased, and those who are ill-developed, physically and mentally. So that, in so far as marriage is determined by female selection, the average result on men is that while the best easily get wives, a certain proportion of the worst are left without wives.”

Very likely the stupid conclusion into which so many distinguished men have been betrayed will survive for many years yet amongst less distinguished people, but at any rate we may free our minds from it here, and may recognise in the figures to which I have referred, and which are of the same order to-day, the statistical proof of what any observer, however casual, might have inferred from what he sees even amongst his own friends only--that marriage is, as it probably always has been, a selective agent of much value in preserving and augmenting the desirable inherent qualities of the race. It is, of course, the object of race-culture or eugenics to strengthen the hands of marriage in this respect to the utmost possible degree.

=Woman as practical eugenist.=--We must especially note one most important matter, radically affecting race-culture, which is referred to by Herbert Spencer in the passage cited, and has been greatly insisted upon by Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer with Darwin of the principle of natural selection. The matter in question is the possibility of race-culture through the choice of their husbands by women. Not long ago Dr. Wallace[52] described selection through marriage as the “more permanently effective agency through which the improvement of human character may be achieved.” This, in his opinion, can only be perfectly achieved “when a greatly improved social system renders all our women economically and socially free to choose; while a rational and complete education will have taught them the importance of their choice both to themselves and to humanity.... It will act through the agency of well-known facts and principles of human nature, leading to a continuous reduction of the lower types in each successive generation, and it is the only mode yet suggested which will automatically and naturally effect this.” Thus “for the first time in the history of mankind his Character--his very Human Nature itself--will be improved by the slow but certain action of a pure and beautiful form of selection--a selection which will act, not through struggle and death, but through brotherhood and love.”

Dr. Wallace is a socialist, and he believes that only through socialism can we achieve “that perfect freedom of choice in marriage which will only be possible when all are economically equal, and no question of social rank or material advantage can have the slightest influence in determining that choice.” As I have said elsewhere, I would call myself neither a socialist nor an anti-socialist, but if labels are necessary, a eugenist and maternalist. As such, I can only say that this argument for socialism--that it is the necessary condition of eugenics or race-culture--is, for me, incomparably the best argument for that creed; and if it were proved that only through socialism could the utmost be made of women's choice of husbands, then no argument against socialism could have any appreciable weight at all. The fundamental and permanent argument against certain of the highly various and incompatible doctrines which, for our confusion, are commonly lumped together as socialism, is that they would arrest the process by which Nature rewards worth and permits it to perpetuate itself. If, then, it can be shown, as may or may not be the case, that only through socialism can male worth be most effectively chosen and male unworth be rejected for fatherhood, the supreme--that is, the eugenic--argument against socialism becomes the conclusive argument in its favour.

=The field of choice.=--But, however this may be, there can be no question that the eugenic purpose, as well as the happiness and elevation of individuals in the present, will be greatly served by whatever measures increase, to the utmost extent possible, the opportunities for choice in marriage afforded to women and also to men. One of the most amazing and satisfactory facts about marriage as at present practised is, I think, the large proportion--often estimated at seventy-five per cent.--of unions which, apart from any eugenic question, turn out happily, in Great Britain, at any rate. What makes this fact more amazing is the almost incredible limitation of the field of choice within which both sexes are still confined as a whole. If the reader will consider the cases most familiar to him or her, it will surely be admitted that the considerable success of marriage takes on an astonishing aspect when the present strait conditions of choice are taken into account. I am convinced that few more radical and far-reaching, because eugenic, reforms can be conceived than any which, in accordance with Dr. Wallace's argument, tend to widen the field of choice, and that not for one sex only but for both. He would be a rash man who ventured to allot superior value to the selection of man by woman rather than of woman by man, or _vice versâ_.

Quite apart from any deeper and more difficult reforms, such as Dr. Wallace alludes to, I am sure that even the mere widening of the field of choice, as such, is most desirable. To take an instance, which the reader may very likely think trivial and absurd, I have witnessed in my brief career as a hockey player two unions most happy and eugenic in every way, which entirely depended upon the existence of the amusement called mixed hockey--whereat the contracting parties met one another! It is not asserted that these two cases suffice for world-wide generalisation. They are merely cited as instances which set at least one hockey player thinking, even on the field--the field of choice. It is a great argument, because it is a eugenic argument, in favour of community of sports and amusements amongst young people of both sexes, that it does widen the field of choice in marriage, and that in doing so it also tends to favour those factors of selection which the eugenist would desire to see selected: and this especially as compared with the ball-room. I think that the reader will agree that the conditions, the “atmosphere,” the costume, and the other features of what young people call a “dance,” whilst undoubtedly serving the purpose of marriage and widening somewhat a field of choice which might otherwise be ludicrously and impracticably restricted, compare most unfavourably with the conditions of even the mixed hockey field, which, decried though they often be, are to my mind immeasurably healthier on every conceivable ground than those of the ball-room, and not least of all on the eugenic ground of the prominence gained by most desirable qualities, of which mere strength and energy and neuro-muscular skill are quite the least, whilst unselfishness, capacity for self-control, patience, real gallantry--as when a male “full back” refrains from hitting the ball with all his might against the toes of a girl “forward”--the sporting spirit and other true and radical virtues, are the greatest. It is undoubtedly the case that the personal factors, physical and psychical, which determine the mutual attraction of young people, have dependent upon them the whole of human destiny. In society to-day, what one may call the incidence of parenthood, upon which all the future necessarily depends, _is_ determined by nothing other than the humanised form of what Darwin called “sexual selection.” Therefore, it is not trivial but supremely important to discuss the conditions under which the selection obtains.[53]

It has already been suggested that in order to enhance the eugenic value of marriage we should endeavour to widen the field of choice, at present ludicrously restricted by custom, class, religion, economic position, and so forth. The increased locomotion of to-day will be of real eugenic service to the race in this respect, I believe.

Then it has been hinted that young people should meet one another under conditions which make prominent the psychical and put the merely physical or animal into the background--_e.g._ on the hockey field or the ice or in the “literary circle,” rather than in the ball-room. This proposition accords, of course, with what has been said elsewhere as to that great factor of progress which I define as the enhancement of the survival-value of the psychical as against that of the physical. (Note the obvious sequence--survival-value, selection-value, marriage-value, parenthood-value, progress-value.) This proposition and the last might both be worked out, I believe, in considerable detail and not without profit.

Arguing on the same lines, we may agree that even such a small matter, usually considered wholly domestic, as the length of engagements, is of eugenic or racial importance. The eugenist, I think, must welcome long engagements simply because, though they may involve a reduced marriage-rate and a reduced birth-rate--the latter partly in consequence of the reduced marriage-rate, and partly because of the later age at marriage--they tend by the mere operation of time, as we say, to enhance the importance of the psychical and to reduce the importance of the physical factors which determine sexual attraction.

To these three points a fourth, of great importance, must be added. It is that we should favour, as far as possible, those factors of choice for marriage which are inherent, and therefore transmissible, as against those which are acquired, accidental, and therefore not transmissible, _and therefore_ of no racial or eugenic importance. This, of course, is the point made by Dr. Wallace in the article quoted above--or at any rate it is involved in the point he makes. I simply mean that every time a marriage is brought about by, for instance, money, the eugenic value of marriage is at least nullified and may become actually anti-eugenic. Again I say, _if_ Socialism, or the abolition of (_un_-natural) inheritance, be necessary in order that selection for marriage shall be determined by the possession of personal qualities of racial value rather than the power of the purse, which has always been a racial curse, then the sooner socialism is established the better.

=The eugenic value of contemporary marriage.=--The first purpose of this chapter has been to show that in marriage, wherever, and in so far as, it is determined by the mutual attractiveness of young people, there exists a eugenic factor in society to-day; and since the race is in effect recruited by the married people, this aspect of marriage deserves the closest study and attention. I commend this subject, _the eugenic value of contemporary marriage_, to the small but rapidly increasing number of students who realise that eugenics or race-culture will be the supreme science of the future, and who are now devoting themselves to its foundations. No more important and urgent enquiry can be undertaken at this stage. Which, for instance, is the more eugenic, the English system or the French?

The second purpose has been to show that one may believe in and work for eugenics or race-culture without proposing to overthrow all human institutions, or to adopt the methods of the stud-farm, or to initiate a vast campaign of surgery, or sensational and drastic legislation, or even, yet, the employment of marriage certificates. One or all of these things may have their place, now or hereafter; or may, on the other hand, be far worse than futile. But most assuredly it is possible now for the individual parent of marriageable children, for the clergyman, the leader of fashion, the doctor, not to start but to strengthen such by no means impotent eugenic forces as already exist in society, without outraging sentiment or custom--indeed, without attracting public attention to their action at all.

Eugenics has already suffered much at the hands of its so-called friends. It is to be hoped that a real service may be discharged by this attempt to show that on the highest, most accurate and scientific eugenic grounds, we may recognise, claim and welcome every father and mother who desire that the son or daughter whom they care for shall marry for psychical and not for physical love. Every such parent is a eugenist, in effect, though his sole motive may be the welfare of his individual child.

At present we interfere with marriage on every imaginable ground, many utterly trivial, many worse. We encourage or discourage on economic grounds; we recognize many taboos, of caste, creed, colour. It is not for us, certainly, acting as we do, to be offended at the suggestion that we should use our influence to affect marriage on the highest conceivable ground--the life of mankind to come. What we really need is not so much the abolition of Mrs. Grundy as her conversion to the eugenic idea. It is the business of those who believe that eugenics is the greatest ideal in the world to make a eugenist of Mrs. Grundy, as we shall some day: and then it will be realised how potent for good public opinion may become, once it is rightly educated.

Says Mr. Galton, in his latest contribution to the subject:--

“The power of social opinion is apt to be rather under-rated than over-rated. Like the atmosphere which we breathe and by which we live, social opinion operates powerfully without our being conscious of its existence. Everyone knows that governments, manners, and beliefs which were thought to be right, decorous, and true at one period have been judged wrong, indecorous, and false at another; and that views which we have heard expressed by those in authority over us in our childhood and early manhood tend to become axiomatic and unchangeable in mature life.

“Speaking for myself only, I look forward to local eugenic action in numerous directions, including the accumulation of considerable funds to start young couples of ‘worthy’ qualities in their married life, and to assist them and their families at critical times. The gifts to those who are the reverse of ‘worthy’ are enormous in amount; it is stated that the charitable donations in the year 1907 amounted to £4,868,050. I am not prepared to say how much of this was judiciously spent, or in what ways, but merely quote the figures to justify the inference that many of the thousands of persons who are willing to give freely at the prompting of a sentiment based upon compassion, might be persuaded to give largely also in response to a more virile sentiment, based on the desire of promoting the natural gifts and the National Efficiency of future generations.

“In circumscribed communities especially, social approval and disapproval exert a potent force. Its presence is only too easily read by every one who is the object of either, in the countenances, bearing, and manner of those with whom they daily meet and converse. Is it then, I ask, too much to expect that when a public opinion in favour of Eugenics has once taken sure hold of such communities and has been accepted by them as a quasi-religion, the result will be manifested in sundry and very effective modes of action which are as yet untried and many of them even unforeseen?”

=“Breach of promise” and race-culture.=--It may be added that perhaps we shall have to learn to reconsider our ill-judged and stupid censoriousness, directed against young people who get engaged but then become tired of one another--as they accurately say, discover that they are not suited for one another. Not only is it obvious that we are fools in denouncing this discovery of impermanence in their attraction, happily made before marriage, whilst we ignore the disasters of its lamentably _postmature_ discovery, after marriage: but also it should be obvious that the eugenic end is negatively served whenever what would have been an unfortunate union is broken off in time. Our imbecile standard of honour, and the law of breach of promise, which is outrageously abused, at present condemn the man, for instance, who finds that he has made a mistake, whilst passively applauding him who, finding his mistake, thinks it his duty to make it irreparable. Far better would it be that the man incapable of forming an attachment made of the non-material ties which last, should not marry at all. The man who cannot see, or seeing, cannot find it in his heart to love, the spiritual beauties of womanhood, is just the man who can be safely omitted in the eugenist's scheme for fatherhood.

The plea of insanity is, in English law, no protection against a claim for damages for breach of promise to marry, unless it be proved insanity at date of contract in the defendant. A valid contract once made, it is no excuse for non-performance that insanity has been discovered in the family of the other party. This wicked law must be altered.

=The need for further study.=--In his study of this subject the student will naturally turn to Mr. Havelock Ellis's volume entitled _Sexual Selection in Man_.[54] This, of course, has its own scientific value as a statement of facts, notwithstanding its intensely nauseating character. But anything less relevant to what most of us understand by psychology it would be difficult to imagine. The book considers _seriatim_, touch, smell, hearing, and vision as the bases of so-called love. It thus deals with “sensology,” not psychology. Indeed, to the best of one's recollection, after very close and careful reading, there is no allusion to the human mind in it anywhere. If men and women were simply animals, this book would doubtless cover the ground, and perhaps the word “psychology” would even be justified in connection with it. From end to end men and women are consistently treated as animals and no more. Since, however, the human species is possessed of psychical characters which distinguish it from the lower animals, it is not unreasonable to suppose that a volume which really dealt with sexual selection in man would, to say the least of it, recognise the existence of those characters--even if only to reject them as irrelevant to the subject under discussion.

The foregoing remarks do not imply that the purely anatomical and sensory factors are irrelevant to the selection of parents in any generation, and for methodological purposes it might be of value to abstract from the factors of sexual selection in human society such things as odour and contour. But it would be urgently necessary in the course of such a study, if it were to be other than extremely misleading, to observe that this selection of factors was made for purposes of convenience and that the relation of their importance to that of other factors was a matter for further and by no means casual consideration.

We may certainly agree with Mr. Havelock Ellis that sexual selection occurs in human society, and may welcome his volume as supporting that assertion. There follows the extremely interesting and indeed urgent necessity of ascertaining what the factors of this selection really are, what is their relative potency, and what is their capacity for modification. We may further enquire whether they tend to be eugenic. A contribution to this subject is furnished by Mr. Ellis when he shows that width of “hips” is a female character commonly admired by men. Since a wide pelvis is one which can accommodate and safely give birth to a large fœtal head, there is here, as a practically solitary case, a bearing on the eugenic issue: large heads mean, in general, large brains, and it would be ill for the white races if men admired hips as narrow as those of, for instance, the negress, whose pelvis could not find room for the average head of a purely white baby, and who suffers terribly in many cases where the father is white, especially if the child be a boy.

Meanwhile we must wait for studies of this great question from various points of view: notably for a study of the economics of sexual selection as it obtains in human society. Yet further, we require a detailed study of the influence of legislation, custom and public opinion upon sexual selection--on the lines of Mr. Galton's paper on “Restrictions in Marriage.” Mr. Havelock Ellis has more than adequately dealt with the nervous physiology of sexual selection; there remain the psychology and sociology of it--these latter comprehending, one may suppose, ninety-nine per cent. of the whole subject. In the preceding pages allusion has been made to one or two of the more salient aspects of this matter.