light on the subject in the near future. The realization of such an ideal involves selective mating; but this again is nothing new, all mating among civilized people is selective, with a wide range of reasons for the selection. To these will now be added a new one, or rather an old one in a somewhat new light.
Professor J. Arthur Thomson well says:
As to the diffusion of disease by the intermarriage of badly tainted with relatively healthy families, we have this in our own hands, and we need not whine over it. The basis of preferential mating is not unalterable, in fact we know that it sways hither and thither from age to age. Possible marriages are every day prohibited or refrained from for the absurdest of reasons: there is no reason why they should not be prohibited or refrained from for the best of reasons—the welfare of our race.
On the other hand, we have to consider the means of increasing and continuing good qualities. The economic burden of raising a family is at present such as to discourage many whose qualities should be continued to other generations, and there can be no doubt that it would pay society to furnish ample means for the industry of child raising to those who are especially fitted to engage in it. Mr. Francis Galton has tried to calculate the value of different classes of individuals:
The worth of a -class baby would be reckoned in thousands of pounds. Some such "talented" folk fail, but most succeed, and may succeed greatly. They found industries, establish vast undertakings, increase the wealth of multitudes, and amass large fortunes for themselves. Others, whether they be rich or poor, are the guides and lights of the nation, raising its tone, enlighting its difficulties, and improving its ideals. The great gain that England received through the immigration of the Huguenots would be insignificant to what she would derive from an annual addition of a few hundred children of the classes .
