Very likely the stupid conclusion into which so many distinguished men have been betrayed will survive for many years yet amongst less distinguished people, but at any rate we may free our minds from it here, and may recognise in the figures to which I have referred, and which are of the same order to-day, the statistical proof of what any observer, however casual, might have inferred from what he sees even amongst his own friends only--that marriage is, as it probably always has been, a selective agent of much value in preserving and augmenting the desirable inherent qualities of the race. It is, of course, the object of race-culture or eugenics to strengthen the hands of marriage in this respect to the utmost possible degree. =Woman as practical eugenist.=--We must especially note one most important matter, radically affecting race-culture, which is referred to by Herbert Spencer in the passage cited, and has been greatly insisted upon by Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer with Darwin of the principle of natural selection. The matter in question is the possibility of race-culture through the choice of their husbands by women. Not long ago Dr. Wallace[52] described selection through marriage as the “more permanently effective agency through which the improvement of human character may be achieved.” This, in his opinion, can only be perfectly achieved “when a greatly improved social system renders all our women economically and socially free to choose; while a rational and complete education will have taught them the importance of their choice both to themselves and to humanity.... It will act through the agency of well-known facts and principles of human nature, leading to a continuous reduction of the lower types in each successive generation, and it is the only mode yet suggested which will automatically and naturally effect this.” Thus “for the first time in the history of mankind his Character--his very Human Nature itself--will be improved by the slow but certain action of a pure and beautiful form of selection--a selection which will act, not through struggle and death, but through brotherhood and love.”