follow each other. By the joint effect of these two causes, a large effect is in time produced."
Certainly the object of eugenics is not to merely increase human numbers. Quality is more important than quantity in a birth-rate. But it must be evident that other things being equal, a group which marries early will, after a number of generations, supplant a group which marries even a few years later. And there is abundant evidence to show that some of the best elements of the old, white, American race are being rapidly eliminated from the population of America, because of postponement or avoidance of marriage.
Taking the men alone, we find that failure to marry may often be ascribed to one of the following reasons:
- The cultivation of a taste for sexual variety and a consequent unwillingness to submit to the restraints of marriage.
- Pessimism in regard to women from premature or unfortunate sex experiences.
- Infection by venereal disease.
- Deficiency in normal sexual feeling, or perversion.
- Deficiency of one kind or another, physical or mental, causing difficulty in getting an acceptable mate.
The persons in groups 4 and 5 certainly and in groups 1, 2, and 3 probably to a less extent, are inferior, and their celibacy is an advantage to the race, rather than a disadvantage, from a eugenic point of view. Their inferiority is in part the result of bad environment. But since innate inferiority is so frequently a large factor, the bad environment often being experienced only because the nature was inferior to start with, the average of the group as a whole must be considered innately inferior.