Well might Cabanis exclaim: “After having occupied ourselves so curiously with the means of rendering more beautiful and better the races of animals or of plants which are useful or agreeable—after having remodelled a hundred times that of horses and dogs—after having transplanted, grafted, cultivated, in all manners, fruits and flowers—how shameful is it to have totally neglected the race of man! As if it affected us less nearly! as if it were more essential to have large and strong oxen than vigorous and healthy men, highly odorous peaches or finely striped tulips, than wise and good citizens!”
I actually know a man who is so deeply interested in the doctrine of crossing, that every hour of his life is devoted to the improvement of a race of bantam fowls and curious pigeons, and who yet married a mad woman, whom he confines in a garret, and by whom he has some insane progeny.
Let it not be imagined that the discovery of the precise laws of crossing or intermarriage, and the best direction of physical living forces, in relation both to the vital faculties and to those of the mind, upon which knowledge and skill may operate for the improvement of our race, is a matter of difficulty.
It will be shown in this work, that there exist not only an influence of beauty and defects on offspring, but peculiar laws regulating the resemblance of progeny to parents—laws which regard the mode in which the organization of parents affects that of children, or regulates the organs which each parent respectively bestows.
It will accordingly be shown, that, as, on the size, form, and proportion, of the various organs, depend their functions, the importance of such laws is indescribable—whether we regard intermarriages, and that immunity from mental or bodily disease which, when well directed, they may ensure, or the determination of the parentage of a child—or the education of children, in conformity with their faculties—or the employment of men in society.
I conclude this brief view in the words of the writer just quoted: “It is assuredly time for us to attempt to do for ourselves that which we have done so successfully for several of our companions in existence, to review and correct this work of nature—a noble enterprise, which truly merits all our cares, and which nature itself appears to have especially recommended to us by the sympathies and the powers which it has given us.”