cited to show what
is possible. They are monogamy, endogamy, exogamy, Australian marriages,
taboo, prohibited degrees, and celibacy. It can be shown under each of
these heads how powerful are the various combinations of immaterial
motives upon marriage selection, how they may all become hallowed by
religion, accepted as custom, and enforced by law. Persons who are born
under their various rules live under them without any objection. They
are unconscious of their restrictions, as we are unaware of the tension
of the atmosphere. The subservience of civilised races to their several
religious superstitions, customs, authority, and the rest, is frequently
as abject as that of barbarians.

The same classes of motives that direct other races direct ours; so a
knowledge of their customs helps us to realise the wide range of what we
may ourselves hereafter adopt, for reasons as satisfactory to us in
those future times, as theirs are or were to them at the time when they
prevailed.

_III.--Eugenic Qualities of Primary Importance_

The following is offered as a contribution to the art of justly
appraising the eugenic values of different qualities. It may fairly be
assumed that the presence of certain inborn traits is requisite before a
claim to eugenic rank can be justified, because these qualities are
needed to bring out the full values of such special faculties as broadly
distinguish philosophers, artists, financiers, soldiers, and other
representative classes. The method adopted for discovering the qualities
in question is to consider groups of individuals, and to compare the
qualities that distinguish such groups as flourish or prosper from
others of the same kind that decline or decay. This method has the
advantage of giving results more free from the possibility of bias than
those derived from examples of individual cases.

In what follows I shall use the word "community" in its widest sense,
as including any group of persons who are connected by a common
interest--families, schools, clubs, sects, municipalities, nations, and
all intermediate social units. Whatever qualities increase the
prosperity of most or every one of these, will, as I hold, deserve a
place in the first rank of eugenic importance.

Most of us have experience, either by direct observation or through
historical reading, of the working of several communities, and are
capable of forming a correct picture in our minds of the salient
characteristics of