The elimination of the bungled and the botched, and a rigorous selection of the newly-born on qualitative lines both of mind and body, will so much relieve the situation in all over-populated districts that early marriages will become a possibility again. Where it is difficult, assistance will easily be found. For where people acquire honour in helping and promoting the best, instead of promoting and helping the worst, the rich will seek distinction in endowing desirable people instead of endowing wrecks, cripples, and incurables. When once these reforms have been instituted, it will be possible to order life on a much happier scale, particularly for women. Since males and females are normally about equal in number, the increased prosperity will enable most men to marry and most girls to find husbands, and the misery of modern sexual abstinence will cease for millions of women. But, as happiness can be permanently secured only if a nation cuts its coat according to its cloth, careful measures will have to be taken to keep the population within certain limits. Seeing, however, that birth-control and contraceptive methods sacrifice the adults in order to achieve this end, the tendency will be, in a society whose principle it is to sacrifice the less to the greater, to proceed to some kind of controlled and legalized infanticide. This will allow standards governing infant-selection to be periodically revised, and will thus lead to an improvement of the race. Since, however, wars and the greater danger attending male pursuits are always likely to create a preponderance of females in the community, concubinage will be tolerated for the sake of the surplus women; but, instead of its being a concubinage like that of to-day, which is hidden, secret, sterile, condemned, and therefore productive of much distress and tragedy, it will be open, tolerated, recognized, and fruitful, just as it has been in the best civilizations of the past. There are other and very deep reasons why some form of concubinage is essential. I have already dealt with them elsewhere.[12] Suffice it to say here, however, that no shame or discomfort will necessarily attach to the life of the concubines. They will be legally recognized; they will have their social status; and they will be protected by public opinion and by law. Nor will they be encountered in every household. As in former societies which have recognized them, they will be found only where their need is felt, and where their own taste guides them to seek protection. Footnote 12: See _Woman: A Vindication_, pp. 172-3.