How far the State may ultimately be called on to aid in the improvement of the race, in accordance with the ideas we have been considering, is doubtful. It can aid very materially in placing restraints on too early marriage, and by insisting on the attainment of a proper standard of physical training and of mental culture before marriage is entered on. There is no reason, moreover, why the State should not interfere to prevent the marriage of those who are too near of kin, or who by reason of physical or mental ailment, or by their moral defects are not fit subjects for the propagation of the race. The objection to this interference with personal liberty is so strong, however, that even so rational a procedure as preventing the spread, through marriage alliances, of disease and crime cannot yet obtain the sanction of public opinion. This will be educated with the general improvement of the race that must gradually take place through other agencies, and then the State will have merely to carry into effect the decrees of the people, which will be expressed in no uncertain language when woman has attained to the influence to which her own perfected condition will entitle her. FOOTNOTES: [21:A] Mr. Darwin accepted this view at first; but in a note to the second edition of his "Descent of Man" he says: "C. Staniland Wake argues strongly against the views held by these three writers on the former prevalence of almost promiscuous intercourse." See "Development of Kinship and Marriage." Redway, London. 1888. [28:A] The Open Court Publishing Company, Chicago. 1892. [39:A] It should be sixty-one. [42:A] See Lorimer Fison, in "The Journal of the Anthropological Institute," May, 1895, page 361. The whole subject is exhaustively treated by C. Staniland Wake, in his "Development of Kinship and Marriage." PRENATAL CULTURE. In the last preceding chapter we have considered the subject of the improvement of the race, especially through the action of sexual selection, or, as it may be expressed, selective action in the pairing of individuals, whether brought about compulsorily by the controlling influence of the State or some other external authority, or by the actual choice of one or both of the individuals immediately concerned. We have now to deal with the subject of the influence over offspring of affections of the individual organisms from whose union such offspring is derived.