CHAPTER X

marriage at the present time. We urge by every means at our command that marriage be looked upon more seriously, that it be undertaken with more deliberation and consideration. We consider it a crime for people to marry, without knowing each other's family histories. But in spite of all this, ill-assorted, dysgenic marriages will still be made. When such a marriage is later demonstrated to have been a mistake, not only from an individual, but also from a eugenic point of view, society should be ready to dissolve the union. Divorce is far preferable to mere separation, since the unoffending party should not be denied the privilege of remarriage, as the race in most cases needs his or her contribution to the next generation. In extreme cases, it would be proper for society to take adequate steps to insure that the dysgenic party could neither remarry nor have offspring outside marriage. The time-honored justifiable grounds for divorce,—adultery, sterility, impotence, venereal infection, desertion, non-support, habitual cruelty,—appear to us to be no more worthy of legal recognition than the more purely dysgenic grounds of chronic inebriety, feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, insanity or any other serious inheritable physical, mental or moral defect.