(Abstract.)
By C. B. Davenport,
Director, Eugenics Record Office, U.S.A.
Of the various laws limiting freedom of marriage three are of biological import. First, the limitation of relationship between the mates; second, the limitations in mental capacity of the mates; and third, limitations of race.
For the first there is a biological justification in so far as cousin marriages are apt to bring in from both sides of the house the same defect. For the second the justification is partial; but there is equal reason for forbidding the marriage of normal persons both of whom have mentally defective parents or other close relatives. The denial of marriage between races has this justification, that most other races have not, through selection, attained the social status of the Caucasian. In such cases the socially inadequate should be sterilized or segregated in other races as well as in the Caucasian.
[EUGENIC SELECTION AND THE ORIGIN OF DEFECTS.]
(Abstract.)
By Frédéric Houssay,
Professor of Science, University of Paris.