Then there are among celibate men two other classes, largely superior by nature:
6. Those who seek some other end so ardently that they will not make the necessary sacrifice in money and freedom, in order to marry.
7. Those whose likelihood of early marriage is reduced by a prolonged education and apprenticeship. Prolongation of the celibate period often results in life-long celibacy.
Some of the most important means of remedying the above conditions, in so far as they are dysgenic, can be grouped under three general heads:
1. Try to lead all young men to avoid a loose sexual life and venereal disease. A general effort will be heeded more by the superior than by the inferior.
2. Hold up the rôle of husband and father as particularly honorable, and proclaim its shirking, without adequate cause, as dishonorable. Depict it as a happier and healthier state than celibacy or pseudo-celibacy. For a man to say he has never met a girl he can love simply means he has not diligently sought one, or else he has a deficient emotional equipment; for there are many, surprisingly many, estimable, attractive, unmarried women.
3. Cease prolonging the educational period past the early twenties. It is time to call a halt on the schools and universities, whose constant lengthening of the educational period will result in a serious loss to the race. External circumstances of an educational nature should not be allowed to force a young man to postpone his marriage past the age of 25. This means that students must be allowed to specialize earlier. If there is need of limiting the number of candidates, competitive entrance examinations may be arranged on some rational basis. Superior young men should marry, even at some cost to their early efficiency. The high efficiency of any profession can be more safely kept up by demanding a minimum amount of continuation work in afternoon, evening, or seasonal classes, laboratories, or clinics. No more graduate fellowships should be established until those now existing carry a stipend adequate for marriage. Those which already carry larger stipends should not be limited to bachelors, as are the most valuable awards at Princeton, the ten yearly Proctor fellowships of $1,000 each.
The causes of the remarkable failure of college women to marry can not be exhaustively investigated here, but for the purposes of eugenics they may be roughly classified as unavoidable and avoidable. Under the first heading must be placed those girls who are inherently unmarriageable, either because of physical defect or, more frequently, mental defect,—most often an over-development of intellect at the expense of the emotions, which makes a girl either unattractive to men, or inclines her toward a celibate career and away from marriage and motherhood. Opinions differ as to the proportion of college girls who are inherently unmarriageable. Anyone who has been much among them will testify that a large proportion of them are not inherently unmarriageable, however, and their celibacy for the most part must be classified as avoidable. Their failure to marry may be because
(1) They desire not to marry, due to a preference for a career, or development of a cynical attitude toward men and matrimony, due to a faulty education, or
(2) They desire to marry, but do not, for a variety of reasons such as: