"Many a man at the opening of his life work vows, as Judge John Lowell of the middle of the eighteenth century did, as he was being graduated from Harvard College, that he will never marry. But nature was too strong for John Lowell and he married three times, and among his descendants was the director of a great astronomical observatory, the president of Harvard College, a principal founder and promoter of the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Boston Atheneum; the founder of the city of Lowell and its cotton mills; the founder of the Lowell Institute at Boston; the beloved General Charles Russell Lowell and his brother, James, both of whom fell in the Civil War, and James Russell Lowell, poet, professor and ambassador; besides brilliant lawyers and men entrusted with large interests as executors of estates. Do you think John Lowell would have taken that vow could he have foreseen the future?" [Illustration: FIG. 37 Pedigree of family with artistic (dark upper section), literary (dark right section) and musical (dark left section) ability (from Davenport).] =The Elimination of the Grossly Unfit Urgent.--=But even if, under present conditions of partial knowledge and lack of an adequate standard, the constructive phase of eugenics must be left in the main to the awakening conscience of the individual as humanity improves in general enlightenment, the second phase, the elimination of the grossly unfit is one of the greatest social obligations that confronts us to-day. For if there is an alarming amount of mental impairment in civilized nations, and if the problems of pauperism, inebriety, prostitution and criminality are closely interwoven with the problems of mental unsoundness, as we have every reason to believe from available data, then any means which will operate toward securing normally functioning brains will at the same time operate toward diminishing, defects and delinquencies. And inasmuch as a considerable proportion of defects, both mental and physical, are inheritable, it is obvious that if we can diminish the number of children born into the world with defective brains or bodies we have made a long stride in the right direction. [Illustration: FIG. 38 Inheritance of ability (from Kellicott after Whetham).] =Suggested Remedies.--=But how go about it? Various schemes have been proposed, of which the chief are as follows: 1. Laws restricting marriage. 2. Systems of mating with the purpose of covering up and gradually diluting out defective traits. 3. Segregation during the reproductive period. 4. Sterilization. 5. Education in the principles of eugenics.