cts
concerning that inheritance are coming into enactment and enforcement.
The tragedy of marrying ignorantly into a certain and hopeless fate of
union with one who can never be of sound mind is so terrible that the
state itself is trying to safeguard carelessness on that point. The
medical profession is more and more acting a parental part in
requiring the registry of diseases that are most unsocial in their
effect--diseases incident to vice, and which make any man while
suffering from them unfit for marriage. It is proposed by many, and by
law required in some States, that no marriage license shall be given
without a certificate of both mental and physical fitness, to be
handed to the officer before registry of the application, in order
that there may be no public refusal on such grounds of unfitness after
it is known that a license to marry has been sought. This would be far
better than, as has been proposed by some persons, for clergymen to
take the initiative in requiring such physical and mental tests after
a request to marry two people and after a license has been secured.
After a matter has gone so far as to result in a request to a
clergyman to officiate at the marriage ceremony, the exaction of an
examination which the state has not previously required would
inevitably, as has been already shown in some instances, lead to
suspicion and bad feeling. The duty of the state, which alone in our
country gives power to marry (the clergyman performing the ceremony
pronouncing the couple married "by virtue of the power invested in him
by the state"), is clear. That duty is to take all initiative in all
previous inquiries aimed at preventing the marriage of unfit persons.
If the state does take such initiative and for all alike, no matter
what their social standing or reputation may be, then there is no
stigma for any individual and no suspicion aroused to injure any class
of persons. There seems as good reason why a compulsory physical and
mental examination, together with an inquiry into the main facts of a
person's life in order to prevent fraud and exploitation, should
always precede the giving of a marriage license as for the required
physical and mental examination of children when they enter the
tax-supported public school. It is, in both cases, a way by which
society secures itself, in the interest of the family and of social
life, against the fostering or continuance of evils that may be
prevented from poisonin