ing.

When it is only a question of avoiding the procreation of tainted
children, it would be sufficient to instruct reasonable people in the
methods of avoiding conception (vide Chapter XIV).

It is important to bear in mind that modern legislation on marriage
often flavors the reproduction of criminals, lunatics and invalids,
while it hinders the production of healthy children by men who are
intelligent, honest and robust. When an abnormal or unhealthy man is
married, his wife is obliged to submit to the conception of tainted
children. On the other hand, when a strong, healthy and intelligent
girl is in a situation, it often happens that everything is done to
prevent her marrying, so as not to lose her services; the more
conscientious she is and the more attached to her masters, the more
often is this likely to occur.

Girls who have illegitimate children often lose their situations and
their honor. The consideration of cases of everyday occurrence is
sufficient to grasp the difficulty of the question. What we require is
more personal liberty for healthy, normal and adaptable individuals,
and more restrictions for the abnormal, unhealthy and dangerous. The
civil law of the future will have to take these facts into
consideration, if it wishes to keep level with scientific progress,
and prevent the instinct of the people having recourse to lynch law,
or retaliation.

Meanwhile, attempts have been made to get out of the difficulty by
prohibiting the marriage of insane persons or by declaring their
marriage null when it has already been consummated; or again, by
admitting insanity as a cause for divorce. Such measures are good as
makeshifts in a period of transition. They assume that conceptions
only occur in marriage, and that marriage necessarily means
procreation. But these two suppositions are false, for it is only the
pressure of custom and legislation which realizes them in part,
especially in Catholic countries.

The civil code, in the present state of society, has at least the
advantage of making possible the dissolution of monstrous unions, such
as those of the absolutely insane or certain psychopaths of the worst
kind. Unfortunately, divorce is as a rule only accorded in cases of
well-marked mental disorders, while in reality the most atrocious
unions are those which are contracted by crazy persons with only
diminished responsibility, in whom the public and the law are unable
to recognize or understand th