Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/303

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 287

of the legislator to modify these laws and customs, and to create new restrictions unknown before our own time. The old marriage laws and customs had the undisputed authority of religion, they were considered as divine institutions, and superstitious fears prevented transgression. This religious sanction would be absent from modern restricted laws, and, in the case of a conflict between passion or desire and legal prohibition, this would weigh as a feather against that. In a low state of civilization the masses obey traditional laws without questioning their authority. Highly differentiated cultured persons have a strong critical sense ; they ask of everything the reason why, and they have an irrepressible tendency to be their own law-givers. These persons would not submit to laws restricting marriage for the sake of vague eugenics, and if they could not marry under such laws in England, they would marry abroad ; unless you dream of a uniform legislation in all countries of the globe, which would indeed be a bold dream.

FROM PROFESSOR A. POSADA : Without entering into a discussion of the bases on which Mr. Galton has raised eugenics as a science, I find many very acceptable points of view in all that is proposed by this eminent sociologist.

The history of matrimonial relationship in itself discloses most interesting results. The relative character of its forms, the transitory condition of its laws, the very history of these would seem to show that the reflex action of opinion influences the being and constitution of the human family.

Granting this, and assuming that the actual conditions of the matrimonial regime especially those that bear upon the manner of contract must not be considered as the final term of evolution (since they are far from being ideal), one cannot do less than encourage all that is being done to elucidate the positive nature of matrimonial union, and the positive effects resultant from whether such union was effected with regard, or disregard, to the exigencies of generation and its influence on descendants.

Marriage is actually contracted either for love or for gain ; more often than not the woman marries because she does not enjoy economic independence. In such circumstances physiological considerations, the influence of heredity, both physiological and moral, have little or no weight perhaps because they are neither sufficiently known or demonstrated in such a manner that the disastrous effects of their disregard can induce direct motives of conduct.

On this account I think that (i) we should work to elucidate, in as scientific a manner as possible, the requirements of progressive selection in marriage, and we should rigorously demonstrate the consequences of such unions as are decidedly prejudicial to vigorous and healthy offspring; (2) we should disseminate a knowledge of the conclusions ascertained by scientific investigation and rational statistics, so that these could be gradually assimilated by public opinion and con- verted into legal and moral obligations, into determinative motives of conduct. But we must bear in mind that one cannot expect a transformation of actual criteria of sexual relationship from the mere establishment of a science of eugenics, nor even from the propagation of its conclusions ; the problem is thus seen to be very complex.

The actual criteria applied to sexual relationships especially to those here alluded to depend on general economic conditions, by virtue of which marriage is contracted under the influence of a multitude of secondary social predispositions, that have no regard to the future of the race ; and it is useless to think that any propaganda would be sufficient to overcome the exigencies of economic conditions. On the other hand, the actual education of both the woman and the man leaves much to be desired, and more particularly in regard to sexual relationship. And it would be futile to think of any effectual transformation in family life while both the man and woman do not each of them equally exact, by virtue of an invulnerable repugnance to all that injures morality, a purity of morals in the future spouse.

The day that the woman will refuse as husband the man of impure life, with a repugnance equal to that usually felt by man toward impure womanhood, we shall have made a great step toward the transformation of actual marriage to the gain of future generations.