It may indeed be pointed out that those who advocate a higher and more scientific conscience in matters of mating are by no means plotting against love, which is for the most part on their side, but rather against the influences that do violence to love:
- on the one hand, the reckless and thoughtless yielding to mere momentary desire,
- and, on the other hand, the still more fatal influences of wealth and position and worldly convenience which give a factitious value to persons who would never appear attractive partners in life were love and eugenic ideals left to go hand in hand.
It is such unions, and not those inspired by the wholesome instincts of wholesome lovers, which lead, if not to the abstract "deterioration of the race," at all events in numberless cases to the abiding unhappiness of persons who choose a mate without realizing how that mate is likely to develop, nor what sort of children may probably be expected from the union.
The eugenic ideal will have to struggle with the criminal and still more resolutely with the rich; it will have few serious quarrels with normal and well constituted lovers.
It will now perhaps be clear how it is that the eugenic conception of the improvement of the race embodies a new ideal. We are familiar with legislative projects for compulsory certificates as a condition of marriage. But even apart from all the other considerations which make such schemes both illusory and undesirable, these externally imposed regulations fail to go to the root of the matter. If they are voluntary, if they spring out of a fine eugenic aspiration, it is another matter. Under these conditions the method may be carried out