Page:Personal Beauty and Racial Betterment.djvu/101

 Rh comforts of life can be secured more easily by the bachelor than by the benedict under modern conditions, the one great thing which can be secured only by marriage—namely, the possession of children—leads out of bachelorhood. This is especially true of the man who marries “for love” only.

The conservation of beauty is the problem of the present day and of all time. I have attempted to show that such conservation is not to be sought primarily through comprehensive governmental direction, nor legal restrictions; nor by blind adherence to the protective regulations of the past, however admirable these may have been. Laws, conventions, and economic conditions should be so shaped as to facilitate conservation, instead of hindering it; but this shaping, and the still greater work of active motivation is to be accomplished through education and publicity directed in the service of ideals kept continually vitalized; ideals of personal values, among which beauty, in the comprehensive mental and physical interpretation we have given it, is paramount.