and which were based on
transcendental doctrines. So long as we do not know whether acquired
modifications are inheritable or not, we are not prepared to elaborate a
policy of marriage which can be dogmatically taught or civilly enforced.
This much, however, is certain,--the interests of society are more at
stake in these things than in anything else. All other projects of
reform and amelioration are trivial compared with the interests which
lie in the propagation of the species, if those can be so treated as to
breed out predispositions to evils of body and mind, and to breed in
vigor of mind and body. It even seems sometimes as if the primitive
people were working along better lines of effort in this matter than we
are, when we allow marriage to be controlled by "love" or property; when
our organs of public instruction taboo all which pertains to
reproduction as improper; and when public authority, ready enough to
interfere with personal liberty everywhere else, feels bound to act as
if there was no societal interest at stake in the begetting of the next
generation.

+533.+ It is self-evident that there ought to be no restriction on
marriage except such as is necessary to protect some interest of the
parties, their children, or the society. The necessity must also be real
and not traditional or superstitious. The evils of inbreeding are so
probable as to justify strong prejudice against consanguine marriages.
If primitive men set up the taboo on incest without knowing this, they
acted more wisely than they knew. We who have inherited the taboo now
have knowledge which gives a rational and expedient reason for it. The
mores, therefore, still have a field of useful action to strengthen and
reaffirm the taboo. There is also a practical question still
unsettled,--whether the marriage of first cousins should be included in
the taboo.

[1658] Parkinson, _Ethnog. d. Nordwestl. Salomo Ins._, 6.

[1659] Snyder, _Geog. of Marriage_.

[1660] _Anc. Soc._, 424.

[1661] _Marriage_, 317.

[1662] _Ibid._, 319, 334, 352.

[1663] Durkheim in _L'Annee Sociologique_, I, 59-65.

[1664] Starcke, _Prim. Fam._, 230.

[1665] _Ethnog. Brasil._, 115.

[1666] _Ibid._, 334 note.

[1667] _Umschau_, VIII, 496.

[1668] JAI, XXIV, 169.

[1669] Perelaer, _Dyaks_, 59.

[1670] Wilken, _Volkenkunde_, 267.

[1671] Hopkins, _Relig. of India_, 531.

[1672] Lewin, _Wild Races of S. E. India_,