minary to marriage
forms no part of Eugenics, nor is compulsory sterilization a demand made
by any reasonable eugenist. Certainly the custom of securing
certificates of health and ability is excellent, not only as a
preliminary to marriage, but as a general custom. Certainly, also, there
are cases in which sterilization is desirable, if voluntarily
accepted.[25] But neither certification nor sterilization should be
compulsory. They only have their value if they are intelligent and
deliberate, springing out of a widened and enlightened sense of personal
responsibility to society and to the race.

Eugenics constitutes the link between the Social Reform of the past,
painfully struggling to improve the conditions of life, and the Social
Hygiene of the future, which is authorized to deal adequately with the
conditions of life because it has its hands on the sources of life. On
this plane we are able to concentrate our energies on the finer ends of
life, because we may reasonably expect to be no longer hampered by the
ever-increasing burdens which were placed upon us by the failure to
control life; while the more we succeed in our efforts to purify and
strengthen life, the more magnificent become the tasks we may reasonably
hope to attempt and compass.

A problem which is often and justly cited as one to be settled by
Eugenics is that presented by the existence among us of the large class
of the feeble-minded. No doubt there are some who would regret the
disappearance of the feeble-minded from our midst. The philosophies of
the Bergsonian type, which to-day prevail so widely, place intuition
above reason, and the "pure fool" has sometimes been enshrined and
idolized. But we may remember that Eugenics can never prevent absolutely
the occurrence of feeble-minded persons, even in the extreme degree of
the imbecile and the idiot.[26] They come within the range of variation,
by the same right as genius so comes. We cannot, it may be, prevent the
occurrence of such persons, but we can prevent them from being the
founders of families tending to resemble themselves. And in so doing, it
will be agreed by most people, we shall be effecting a task of immense
benefit to society and the race.

Feeble-mindedness is largely handed on by heredity. It was formerly
supposed that idiocy and feeble-mindedness are mainly due to
environmental conditions, to the drink, depravity, general disease, or
lack of nutrition of the parents, and there is