Finally, young people should be taught a greater appreciation of the lasting qualities of comradeship, for which the purely emotional factors that make up mere sexual attraction are far from offering a satisfactory substitute.
It will not be out of place here to point out that a change in the social valuation of reputability and honor is greatly needed for the better working of sexual selection. The conspicuous waste and leisure that Thorstein Veblen points out as the chief criterion of reputability at present have a dubious relation to high mental or moral endowment, far less than has wealth. There is much left to be done to achieve a meritorious distribution of wealth. The fact that the insignia of success are too often awarded to trickery, callousness and luck does not argue for the abolition altogether of the financial success element in reputability, in favor of a "dead level" of equality such as would result from the application of certain communistic ideals. Distinctions, rightly awarded, are an aid, not a hindrance to sexual selection, and effort should be directed, from the eugenic point of view, no less to the proper recognition of true superiority than to the elimination of unjustified differentiations of reputability.
This leads to the consideration of moral standards, and here again details are complex but the broad outlines clear. It seems probable that morality is to a considerable extent a matter of heredity, and the care of the eugenist should be to work with every force that makes for a clear understanding of the moral factors of the world, and to work against every force that tends to confuse the issues. When the issue is clear cut, most people will by instinct tend to marry into moral rather than immoral stocks.
True quality, then, should be emphasized at the expense of false standards. Money, social status, family alignment, though indicators to some degree, must not be taken too much at their face value. Emphasis is to be placed on real merit as shown by achievement, or on descent from the meritoriously eminent, whether or not such eminence has led to the accumulation of a family fortune and inclusion in an exclusive social set. In this respect, it is important that the value of a high average of ancestry should be realized. A single case of eminence in a pedigree should not weigh too heavily. When it is remembered that statistically one grandparent counts for less than one-sixteenth in the heredity of an individual, it will be obvious that the individual whose sole claim to consideration is a distinguished grandfather, is not necessarily a matrimonial prize. A general high level of morality and mentality in a family is much more advantageous, from the eugenic point of view, than one "lion" several generations back.
While we desire very strongly to emphasize the importance of breeding and the great value of a good ancestry, it is only fair to utter a word of warning in this connection. Good ancestry does not necessarily make a man or woman a desirable partner. What stockmen know as the "pure-bred scrub" is a recognized evil in animal breeding, and not altogether absent from human society. Due to any one or more of a number of causes, it is possible for a germinal degenerate to appear in a good family; discrimination should certainly be made against such an individual. Furthermore, it is possible that there occasionally arises what may be called a mutant of very desirable character from a eugenic point of view. Furthermore a stock in general below mediocrity will occasionally, due to some fortuitous but fortunate combination of traits, give rise to an individual of marked ability or even eminence, who will be able to transmit in some degree that valuable new combination of traits to his or her own progeny. Persons of this character are to be regarded by eugenists as distinctly desirable husbands or wives.
The desirability of selecting a wife (or husband) from a family of more than one or two children was emphasized by Benjamin Franklin, and is also one of the time-honored traditions of the Arabs, who have always looked at eugenics in a very practical, if somewhat cold-blooded way. It has two advantages: in the first place, one can get a better idea of what the individual really is, by examining sisters and brothers; and in the second place, there will be less danger of a childless marriage, since it is already proved that the individual comes of a fertile stock. Francis Galton showed clearly the havoc wrought in the English peerage, by marriages with heiresses (an heiress there being nearly always an only child). Such women were childless in a much larger proportion than ordinary women.
"Marrying a man to reform him" is a speculation in which many women have indulged and usually—it may be said without fear of contradiction—with unfortunate results. It is always likely that she will fail to reform him; it is certain that she can not reform his germ-plasm. Psychologists agree that the character of a man or woman undergoes little radical change after the age of 25; and the eugenist knows that it is largely determined, potentially, when the individual is born. It is, therefore, in most cases the height of folly to select a partner with any marked undesirable trait, with the idea that it will change after a few years.
All these suggestions have in general been directed at the young man or woman, but it is admitted that if they reach their target at all, it is likely to be by an indirect route. No rules or devices can take the place, in influencing sexual selection, of that lofty and rational ideal of marriage which must be brought about by the uplifting of public opinion. It is difficult to bring under the control of reason a subject that has so long been left to caprice and impulse; yet much can unquestionably be done, in an age of growing social responsibility, to put marriage in a truer perspective. Much is already being done, but not in every case of change is the future biological welfare of the race sufficiently borne in mind. The interests of the individual are too often regarded to the exclusion of posterity. The eugenist would not sacrifice the individual, but he would add the welfare of posterity to that of the individual, when the standards of sexual selection are being fixed. It is only necessary to make the young person remember that he will marry, not merely an individual, but a family; and that not only his own happiness but to some extent the quality of future generations is being determined by his choice.
We must have (1) the proper ideals of mating but (2) these ideals must be realized. It is known that many young people have the highest kind of ideals of sexual selection, and find themselves quite unable to act on them. The college woman may have a definite idea of the kind of husband she wants; but if he never seeks her, she often dies celibate. The young man of science may have an ideal bride in his mind, but if he never finds her, he may finally marry his landlady's daughter. Opportunity for sexual selection must be given, as well as suitable standards; and while education is perhaps improving the standards each year, it is to be feared that modern social conditions, especially in the large cities, tend steadily to decrease the opportunity.
Statistical evidence, as well as common observation, indicates that the upper classes have a much wider range of choice in marriage than the lower classes. The figures given by Karl Pearson for the degree of resemblance between husband and wife with regard to phthisis are so remarkable as to be worth quoting in this connection: