Epilepsy is another disease which is so often transmitted to children that any one of either sex suffering from it had better abstain from parentage. If one parent is remarkably healthy, the children may escape the severest form of penalty; but even then they may suffer from nervousness and other diseases, and rarely enjoy robust health.
The question whether persons who have a consumptive tendency should become parents or not has frequently been discussed by sanitarians, but never settled. Such persons are frequently intellectual, and often of an unusually cheerful and hopeful disposition. They are, in most cases, quite prolific. In the female they generally make excellent wives and mothers; in the case of the male, they are not uncommonly good providers for their families, and also good fathers. Except in the worst cases, does the welfare of the race demand that they shall not marry and become parents. Probably not. But we must advise them to take the very best care of their imperfect bodies; to develop their chests by wise but not excessive physical training; to husband their physiological resources carefully; not to marry young, nor rear too many children. Excessive childbearing is a prolific cause in women of consumption, and excessive sexual indulgence is a frequent cause of it in both sexes.
These remarks should not be construed to mean that those who are already in the early stages of this disease, or whose families on both sides have been deeply affected by it, may become parents. They should not. But in the present state of society, we cannot hold men and women up to an ideal standard. Some slight risks may be taken, but not too great ones. As the race progresses in knowledge, however, we may raise our standards, and finally make them so high that no one with a tendency to any serious disease which is likely to affect the offspring unfavorably shall have any right to contribute to the world's population.
I have mentioned only a few of the many diseases which affect the germ plasm unfavorably. It is hardly necessary to extend the list.
One other subject deserves consideration, when I will bring this chapter to a close. Every child born into the world is, to a certain extent, an experiment. That is to say, the parents cannot predict its sex, nor what its chief characteristics will be. These depend on what potentialities are stored up in the germ plasm. If this be formed by parents in good health, with a surplus of vital force, and a long line of ancestors with normal lives, we may believe that if the environment be favorable, the child will develop so as to show the same characteristics, perhaps in an even higher degree. Whatever variations there are will not be much below or above the average line of its ancestors. The congenital characters will tend to be transmitted. They are in the germ plasm, even in great detail. Whether the acquired ones are transmitted may still be uncertain; but whether they are or not, normal right living will be sure to have good effects. Obey the laws of life and far better results will follow than if they are disobeyed.
FEWER AND BETTER CHILDREN.
In the present age suggestions on this subject may seem superfluous. The more highly educated and wealthy classes have already sufficiently reduced the number of children which they bring into the world. But are these offspring any better than they would have been had their parents given birth to a larger number?
Mr. Darwin did not think much could be done to improve the race by parents limiting the number of their offspring. He would trust to natural selection to weed out the unfit, and to sexual selection as an aid. He thus describes the probable manner of action of sexual selection among primeval men: "The strongest and most vigorous men—those who could best defend and hunt for their families; those who were provided with the best weapons and possessed the most property, such as a large number of dogs or other animals—would succeed in rearing a greater average number of offspring than the weaker and poorer members of the same tribes. Such men would doubtless generally be able to select the more attractive women. . . . If, then, this be admitted, it would be an unexplainable circumstance if the selection of the more attractive women by the more powerful men of the tribes, who would rear on the average a greater number of children, did not, after the lapse of generations, modify the character of the tribes."
