ependence of women I can see
for myself," I said. "There can be no marriages now except those of
inclination."

"That is a matter of course," replied Dr. Leete.

"Think of a world in which there are nothing but matches of pure love!
Ah me, Dr. Leete, how far you are from being able to understand what an
astonishing phenomenon such a world seems to a man of the nineteenth
century!"

"I can, however, to some extent, imagine it," replied the doctor. "But
the fact you celebrate, that there are nothing but love matches, means
even more, perhaps, than you probably at first realize. It means that
for the first time in human history the principle of sexual selection,
with its tendency to preserve and transmit the better types of the
race, and let the inferior types drop out, has unhindered operation.
The necessities of poverty, the need of having a home, no longer tempt
women to accept as the fathers of their children men whom they neither
can love nor respect. Wealth and rank no longer divert attention from
personal qualities. Gold no longer 'gilds the straitened forehead of
the fool.' The gifts of person, mind, and disposition; beauty, wit,
eloquence, kindness, generosity, geniality, courage, are sure of
transmission to posterity. Every generation is sifted through a little
finer mesh than the last. The attributes that human nature admires are
preserved, those that repel it are left behind. There are, of course, a
great many women who with love must mingle admiration, and seek to wed
greatly, but these not the less obey the same law, for to wed greatly
now is not to marry men of fortune or title, but those who have risen
above their fellows by the solidity or brilliance of their services to
humanity. These form nowadays the only aristocracy with which alliance
is distinction.

"You were speaking, a day or two ago, of the physical superiority of
our people to your contemporaries. Perhaps more important than any of
the causes I mentioned then as tending to race purification has been
the effect of untrammeled sexual selection upon the quality of two or
three successive generations. I believe that when you have made a
fuller study of our people you will find in them not only a physical,
but a mental and moral improvement. It would be strange if it were not
so, for not only is one of the great laws of nature now freely working
out the salvation of the race, but a profound moral sentiment has come
to its support. Individualism