pproved in each sex. In marrying, people are influenced by these
appreciations and they select for or against them. Thus marriage is
controlled by a complicated selection according to a number of standards
which prevail at the time and place. At present the popular view seems
to be that all standards are false, and that the limitations ought to be
trampled on as representing abandoned ideals. It is thought that the
whole matter ought to be left to the control of an unintelligent
impulse, which is capable of any caprice, but whose authority is
imperative. Perverse as the old restrictions often were, they had in
them a notion of self-selection such as is needed now, if only the
criteria and standards which are correct can be ascertained. The old
restrictions contained a notion of breeding up, a notion which is by no
means false, if we can get a rational idea of what is "up." No marriage
ought now to be contracted without full application of all we know about
heredity and selection. If, in any society, marriages were thus
contracted, the effect would be most favorable on posterity, and on the
power in action and the perpetuity of the group, for the net result
would be that those who are least fit to propagate the race would be the
ones who would be left unmarried or would marry each other. In the
latter case their posterity would soon disappear, and the evil factors
would be eliminated. A father now refuses his daughter to a drunkard, a
criminal, a pauper, a bankrupt, an inefficient man, one who has no
income, etc. Some men refuse their daughters to irreligious men, or to
men who are not of their own sect or subsect. Some allow inherited
wealth, or talent, or high character, etc., to outweigh disadvantages.
In short, we already have selection. It always has existed. The law of
incest was an instinctive effort in the same direction. The problem is
the same now as it always has been,--to refine and correct the standards
and to determine their relative importance.

+532. Restrictions by biological facts as yet too uncertain.+ As yet,
undoubtedly, the great reason why people are reluctant to construct a
policy of marriage and population on biological doctrines is that those
doctrines are too uncertain. The reluctance is well justified. Hasty
action, based on shifting views of fact and law, would simply add new
confusion and trouble to that produced by the customs and legislative
enactments which we have inherited from the past