e must decide for themselves. As is stated in an
earlier chapter, sometimes this policy is the wisest that can be pursued.

[Illustration]

2. DISEASED PEOPLE.--Diseased people who are likely to beget only a sickly
offspring, may follow this course, and so may thieves, rascals, vagabonds,
insane and drunken persons, and all those who are likely to bring into the
world beings that ought not to be here. But why so many well-to-do folks
should pursue a policy adapted only to paupers and criminals, is not easy
to explain. Why marry at all if not to found a family that shall live to
bless and make glad the earth after father and mother are gone? It is not
wise to rear too many children, nor is it wise to have too few. Properly
brought up, they will make home a delight and parents happy.

3. POPULATION LIMITED.--Galton, in his great work on hereditary genius,
observes that "the time may hereafter arrive in far distant years, when the
population of this earth shall be kept as strictly within bounds of number
and suitability of race, as the sheep of a well-ordered moor, or the plants
in an orchard-house; in the meantime, let us do what we can to encourage
the multiplication of the races best {233} fitted to invent and conform to
a high and generous civilization."

4. SHALL SICKLY PEOPLE RAISE CHILDREN?--The question whether sickly people
should marry and propagate their kind, is briefly alluded to in an early
chapter of this work. Where father and mother are both consumptive the
chances are that the children will inherit physical weakness, which will
result in the same disease, unless great pains are taken to give them a
good physical education, and even then the probabilities are that they will
find life a burden hardly worth living.

5. NO REAL BLESSING.--Where one parent is consumptive and the other
vigorous, the chances are just half as great. If there is a scrofulous or
consumptive taint in the blood, beware! Sickly children are no comfort to
their parents, no real blessing. If such people marry, they had better, in
most cases, avoid parentage.

6. WELFARE OF MANKIND.--The advancement of the welfare of mankind is a most
intricate problem: all ought to refrain from marriage who cannot avoid
abject poverty for their children; for poverty is not only a great evil,
but tends to its own increase by leading to recklessness in marriage. On
the other hand, as Mr. Galton has remarked, if the prudent avoid marriage,
while the r