same social approval and reward that is
meted out for other activities will the ineradicable and irrespressible
egoistic desires that now prevent individuals from assuming the
responsibilities of family life be enlisted in the very cause to which
they are now so hostile. When the same disapproval is manifested for the
shirking of reproductive activities by the eugenically fit that is now
directed toward lack of patriotism in other lines, the number of
voluntary celibates in society will be materialy decreased.

The greatest triumph of society in the manipulation of the sexual and
reproductive life of its members will come when it is able to condition
the emotional reaction of the individual by the substitution of the
eugenic ideal for the parental fixation and to focus the sentiment of
romantic love upon eugenic traits. When this is accomplished, the
selection of the mate will at least be favourable for racial
regeneration even if individual disharmonies are not entirely
eliminated. That there are great difficulties in the way of this
accomplishment may be admitted at the outset. The conditioned responses
to be broken down and replaced are for the most part formed in early
childhood, and have had a long period in which to become firmly
impressed upon the organism. But psychological experiments have proven
that even the best established conditioned reactions can be broken down
and others substituted in their place, so that the situation is not so
hopeless. When we recollect that for ages the traditional ideals of
masculinity and femininity have been conditioning the emotional life of
men and women to respond to their requirements with a remarkable degree
of success, there is ground for the belief that the same forces of
suggestion and imitation may be turned to more rational ends and
utilized as an effective means of social therapy.

If we are to have a more rationalized form of social control, then, it
will undoubtedly take into consideration the necessity of forming the
socially desirable conditionings of the emotional life. The importance
of the emotional reactions for social progress has been very well
summarized by Burgess, who says that emotion can be utilized for
breaking down old customs and establishing new ones, as well as for the
conservation of the mores. Society can largely determine around what
stimuli the emotions can be organized, this author continues, and the
group has indeed always sought to control