The "age of consent" and the age of marriage must be brought to a common minimum. If a girl is mature enough for one she is mature enough for the other. The condition of parental consent seems at first glance an anachronism, but may have some Eugenic value if modified to mean that the age of consent can be pre-dated in exceptional cases.
No husband or wife should be tied for life to a person who develops symptoms of such diseases as tuberculosis, syphilis, chronic alcoholism and the like. Felony and even incurable laziness or incapacity should be good grounds for divorce. There is no necessary connection between Socialism and Eugenics but neither is there any essential antagonism. Eugenics recognises the responsibilities of parenthood and to that extent is individualistic; it claims also that the children born to all men, rich or poor, are bound to be born as healthy as advancing science can make them. That is why Eugenics is sometimes regarded as socialistic, but we have long ago decided that health is a national concern and therefore the State builds hospitals, passes sanitary laws and insists on the notification of certain diseases. In a Republic it ought not to be necessary to say that classes should not exist. At the risk of accentuating the socialistic accusation it has to be made plain that matrimonial selection must ignore distinctions of wealth and class and creed. The fit must wed the fittest, that is the keynote of Eugenics. Eugenics speaks with no uncertain voice on the "Colour question"—every race must work out its own salvation, and in the interests of each race there must be no intermarrying. It is a healthy and natural objection which causes a white woman to shudder at the idea of a mixed marriage. The mating of a black woman with a white man is seldom a wedding, it generally means degradation to both and excessive suffering to the victims—the woman and the child.
After we have done all we can to make marriage a more perfect institution we are only beginning the ideal of Eugenic life. We have to know more than we know at present of what characteristics are best combined with what others, and to know which unions are fraught with dangers both to the partners and still more to the offspring. The old Stirpiculturists have very much to say on the subject of "likes and contrasts" from the days of Byrd Powell up till the time when scientific Eugenics under Sir Francis Galton gave new light to the study: Phrenology, freed from its showman and charlatan element, may yet help us in our quest. For there is no divorce law which can ever cure the ills of ill-assorted marriage. Our ignorance may not be criminal, it is nevertheless deplorable. Science gathers increasing information about all other things and we spend our millions on investigating the prevention of utilisation of waste, shall we not hope that this great institution of marriage may too in its turn be the subject of our scientists', philosophers' and statisticians' concern. Marriage has its origin in the profoundest needs of social man. The raison d'etre of marriage is human happiness now and in the generations to follow. Throwing legislative obstacles in the way of marriage has never had any effect except the increase of illegitimacy. The scientific remedy here as elsewhere is enlightenment. We have to safeguard the race and educate the present generation. We cannot tell those who would marry more than we know ourselves, but every ascertained fact and every reasonable probability about marriage should be at the disposal of every candidate for the "holy order." The mere necessity of systematising our knowledge ready for distribution will be a gain, the sum of actual fact about the mating of various temperaments and characteristics may be larger than we think. Anyhow it offers a promising field of research. Eugenics will encourage the endowment of such knowledge, it will seek subsidies from the State towards its acquisition, it will strive to popularise it in every way until it will be much rarer than it is to-day unhappily to hear the complaints "If youth but knew," and "It might have been."
POSSIBILITIES OF RACE IMPROVEMENT
It is unnecessary to argue the desirability of race improvement. It is the avowed ultimate object of every religious, moral, social and individual reform. In the light of history we know that race improvement is possible. Degeneration is the scientists' formula for the theologian's "fall from grace," evolution is the Darwinian phrase for
"That far-off divine event
To which the whole creation moves."
The Eugenist does not say that religion, morality, and education are ineffective, he only claims that these great forces should apply to the foundations of society instead of being spent and dissipated in a thousand less important directions.