m one could have precise duties was the partner in
the process. Directly considering the partner's claims was the nearest
one could get to indirectly considering the claims of posterity. If
the women of the harem sang praises of the hero as the Moslem mounted
his horse, it was because this was the due of a man; if the Christian
knight helped his wife off her horse, it was because this was the due
of a woman. Definite and detailed dues of this kind they did not
predicate of the babe unborn; regarding him in that agnostic and
opportunist light in which Mr. Browdie regarded the hypothetical child
of Miss Squeers. Thinking these sex relations healthy, they naturally
hoped they would produce healthy children; but that was all. The
Moslem woman doubtless expected Allah to send beautiful sons to an
obedient wife; but she would not have allowed any direct vision of
such sons to alter the obedience itself. She would not have said, "I
will now be a disobedient wife; as the learned leech informs me that
great prophets are often the children of disobedient wives." The
knight doubtless hoped that the saints would help him to strong
children, if he did all the duties of his station, one of which might
be helping his wife off her horse; but he would not have refrained
from doing this because he had read in a book that a course of falling
off horses often resulted in the birth of a genius. Both Moslem and
Christian would have thought such speculations not only impious but
utterly unpractical. I quite agree with them; but that is not the
point here.

The point here is that a new school believes Eugenics _against_
Ethics. And it is proved by one familiar fact: that the heroisms of
history are actually the crimes of Eugenics. The Eugenists' books and
articles are full of suggestions that non-eugenic unions should and
may come to be regarded as we regard sins; that we should really feel
that marrying an invalid is a kind of cruelty to children. But history
is full of the praises of people who have held sacred such ties to
invalids; of cases like those of Colonel Hutchinson and Sir William
Temple, who remained faithful to betrothals when beauty and health had
been apparently blasted. And though the illnesses of Dorothy Osborne
and Mrs. Hutchinson may not fall under the Eugenic speculations (I do
not know), it is obvious that they might have done so; and certainly
it would not have made any difference to men's moral opinion of the
act. I do