Page:Personal Beauty and Racial Betterment.djvu/65

Rh of a large fraction of the next generation of citizens, how to work and play, it seems a pity that we cannot asphyxiate the hopeless insane and feeble-minded as kindly as we do stray dogs and cats. Such a course of procedure, however, is impracticable, for the reasons assigned below against legalized sterilization.

The second way in which civilization interferes with the conservation of the desirable human qualities, is in setting sexual values which conflict with those of beauty, and which obscure or override them.

The natural desire for children is inhibited by other desires of various sorts: desires which in many cases are good in themselves, but which are so puffed up by civilization that many couples who are personally qualified, legally authorized, and economically able, to create children, produce none or too few. On account of these social values which civilization creates, many who are excellently qualified for parenthood do not even marry.

On the other hand, the social values which are purchasable by wealth and which again, are in many cases commendable, often obscure personal undesirability; and men and women who, in a more natural order of things would not be counted beautiful, nor considered desirable coparents, are sought after and married. Fortunately, it frequently happens that the inhibitory process we