The same result emerges if we consider the matter, not from the point of view of sociology, but from that of an enlightened system of morality. The evidence available shows, for instance, that little if any harm is likely to ensue from the marriage of first cousins, so long as the stock is a healthy one: much the same is probably true as regards the marriage of half brother and half sister or even full brother and sister. Our condemnation of such unions is due to influences emanating from the repression of the incest tendencies, and not to any sound appreciation or experience of their ill effects; and in so far as the taboos consequent upon repression give way to more balanced moral judgments based on a real understanding of the issues involved (and this is the general tendency of ethical development), the disapproval of these unions between near kin will be continued only in so far as real dangers are to be apprehended from them. Among such real dangers there may be found the biological one of the possibility of inferior offspring, especially in the case of families with marked hereditary defects, and the psychological one of too little emancipation from the family influences, with all the consequences that this may involve. As regards this latter, however, it will have to be recognised that complete emancipation may often be beyond the bounds of possibility and that it is often advisable to permit some degree of indulgence to overstrong unconscious tendencies, so long as this indulgence is not too persistent or too definitely pathological. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 265: It would seem that children who have never known their parents or any normal parent substitutes, such as those who are brought up entirely in orphanages and other institutions, nevertheless do actually find corresponding objects on to whom their parent-regarding tendencies can be directed; if not in reality, at least in imagination--imagination that tends to find a real equivalent as soon as a suitable object presents itself. This is amusingly and instructively illustrated in Jean Webster's recently successful book and play "Daddy Long Legs".] [Footnote 266: It is scarcely necessary to point out the Neo-Malthusian bearings of these considerations. They add one more argument to the many that already exist in favour of the practice of birth-control, which is now adopted by the more cultured classes of nearly all civilised communities--a practice the ethical justifications of which are becoming constantly more manifest.