"Tell me why," said the Frenchman. "Our great Massenet is of a family of children"—he swung his arm and dropped his emptied cup—"countless—absolutely countless. Environment, that is what you forget; environment, and inclination and suitable physique. What to do? You should change the economic conditions that breed your 'defectives' as a refuse-heap breeds flies, but instead you propose to spend time and money to try to 'segregate' defectives as fast as you manufacture them. 'Segregate' and 'sterilize'? I have yet to hear of one of you sterilising a degenerate child of your own. You produce them not? Often. And you produce the good? Francis Galton left no child at all. I, Boussingault, say to you: breed a Florence Nightingale and an Isaac Newton and bring them up in a city slum and set them to work in a city factory, and their very good breeding will be society's loss. Truly. What you will have will not be a philanthropist and a scientist, but only a more than commonly seductive fille and a more than commonly clever thief. You cannot breed a free race until you have given to the possible mothers of it freedom of choice; and you cannot breed a healthy race until you have given to papa and mamma and baby proper food and surroundings—until you have given the man working the full pay for his toil."
He leaned back in his chair, held his handkerchief before his mouth without concealing it, and began to pick his teeth.
Muriel rose; she was pale. The two men started also to rise.
"Please don't," said Muriel. "I shall be back in a moment."
"Dearest——" began Stainton.
Muriel's answer was one look. She hurried from the room.
"My wife," said Stainton, resuming his seat, "is not very well."
"You desolate me," replied the physician as he grunted his way back into his chair. "But now that madame absents herself for a moment, let me be explicit."
"Explicit?" said Stainton. "I should have thought—Why, you have been talking as if the very construction of society were a crime!"
"Ah," said Boussingault, delightedly, "then you perceive just my point. That is it; you put it well: modern society is The Great Crime—life is The Great Sin—what we have made of Life. Disease, Ignorance, Poverty, Wage-slavery, Child-slavery, Lust-slavery, Marriage-slavery! Marriage does not produce good children more than bad. Some of the highest types of humanity have been produced by the left hand. You ignore the positive side of selective breeding. If you can decide what constitutes a 'fit' man, how can you limit his racial gifts to the child-bearing capacities of one woman? And the woman, her, too; you must provide for selective futile polygamy and polyandry. You must be presented to the unmarried mother——"