y in accord with
arbitrary regulations which have coalesced in the institutions of
marriage and the family. These institutions have been developed to fit a
definite ideal of manhood and womanhood which grew up out of a manner of
thinking in accord with taboo control and ignorant superstitions rather
than in harmony with the actual facts of the situation. Now that we are
facing reality and trying to rationalize our thinking, we find that the
variation from these masculine and feminine ideals does not necessarily
imply biological or psychological abnormality, since the ideals were
themselves established without reference to biological and psychological
data.

The traditional marriage and family arrangement tends to enforce a
selection of individuals who conform most nearly to these artificial
types as parents for the succeeding generations. It is not at all
certain that such a selection is advantageous to the group. It would
seem rather that in so complex a social system as that of the present
day with its increasing division of labour on other than purely sexual
distinctions, we need a variety of types of individuals adapted to the
varied activities of modern life.

If society is to successfully meet the present situation it must
utilize its psychological insight to remedy conditions which are
obviously dysgenic and detrimental to the welfare of the race. If the
egoistic and highly individualized modern man and woman are induced to
sacrifice personal ambitions in the interests of reproduction, for
instance, it will only be because society has learned to turn those same
egoistic impulses to its own ends. This will never be accomplished by
the forces of tradition or by any such superimposed method of control as
conscription for parenthood. There is too much of a spirit of freedom
and individual liberty in the social mind to-day for any such measure to
meet with success. The same spirit of freedom which formerly burst the
bonds of superstition and entered into the world of science is now as
impatient of restraint of its emotional life as it formerly was of
restriction of its intellectual search for the truth.

Therefore society can no longer depend upon taboo standards crystallized
into institutionalized forms as a means of control. It must appeal to
more rational motives if it expects to have any degree of influence over
its most intelligent and energetic members. Only when the production of
eugenic offspring brings the