with her husband? Who will then believe that in the
year 1911 an English citizen could go before a court and secure an order
for legalized rape, under the name of restitution of marital rights?

Meantime every issue of the daily press counts as its choicest items
stories of the shameful and soul-destroying ways in which men and women
are trying to live their lives in spite of this mediaeval institution. So
far-reaching is the unrest, that at each new revelation of marital
heresy, society feels constrained to rush forward and frantically
denounce the heretic in order to prove its own orthodoxy.

Our own attitude toward marriage as a sacrament to be directed by a
church, or as a pleasure to be exploited by individuals, must be
changed if the life of the family is to be re-established as the great
vocation of earnest men and women. Intelligence must be turned upon this
problem as upon all others that vitally affect our lives. What President
Eliot has called "the conspiracy of silence touching matters of sex"
must be broken, and when it is, I believe honest men will agree with
Ellen Key that "In love humanity has found the form of selection most
conducive to the ennoblement of the species."[51]

[51] ELLEN KEY, _Love and Marriage._ New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1911

In this field, at least, a eugenic conscience must take the place of the
older theological conscience.[52] We must recognize the infamy of
knowingly bringing defective children into existence. We must agree that
under no conditions should people tainted with syphilis be allowed to
marry; and that those subject to imbecility or insanity should not be
allowed to live together unless they are unsexed.[53] Justice to future
generations, and protection of the state, demands at least this much.

[52] See the publications of the Eugenic Education Society, especially
files of _The Eugenics Review_, 6 York Buildings, Adelphi, London.

[53] Indiana has an admirable law on this subject, and New Jersey has
just added the same to her statutes.

Whether alcoholics, those suffering from congenital sense defects, and
near relatives, should be allowed to marry may still be an open
question; but it should be recognized that the state has the right and
the duty to inquire into these conditions and to impose restrictions.
Society must come to feel that it is at least as shameful for a broken
old noble to live with a young girl under the forms of marriage as for
two young lo