Surely all the foregoing suffices to show, first, that eugenics or race-culture is compatible with marriage, and secondly, that it is compatible with the love of the sexes--two conclusions of the most cardinal and fundamental importance. This importance it is, and the obstinate stupidity of critics of a kind, which must excuse me for having devoted so much space to propositions which the thoughtful reader would naturally have arrived at for himself. =The present influence of marriage on race-culture.=--We must turn now from the past to the present aspect of the question, viz., the actual relation of marriage to eugenics at the present day. Its nature is very much disputed. On the one hand, there are those who see in our present methods what has elsewhere been called reversed selection--that is to say, an anti-eugenic process, involving the mating of the least desirable. On the other hand, there are many conservative critics who, starting from a general opposition to any new thing, such as eugenics, maintain that we are doing very well as we are, and that, without any conscious interference, as they call it--as if there were no such interference--selection by marriage is actually working for the eugenic end. Dr. Maudsley, for instance, is “not sure but that nature in its own blind impulsive way does not manage things better than we can by any light of reason”: an astounding opinion from the veteran pioneer who has devoted so many decades to successfully modifying natural processes by the light of his own splendid reason!