With regard to males, marriage would no doubt be highly beneficial in many instances, _and if the risk of progeny is not run, may well be encouraged_." Esquirol, quoted by Bucknill and Tuke, p.

58, says:--"Of all diseases Insanity is the most hereditary." Bucknill and Tuke, p.

647, say:-- "Of marriage it may be said that the celibacy of the insane is the prophylaxis of Insanity in the race, and although a well chosen mate and a happy marriage may sometimes postpone or even prevent the development of insanity in the individual, still no medical man, having regard to the health of the community, or even of that of the family, can possibly feel himself justified in recommending the marriage of any person of either sex in whom the insane diathesis is well marked." Again (pp.

647 and 648) "It is thus that the seeds of mental diseases and of moral evils are sown broadcast through the land; and other new defects and diseases are multiplied and varied with imbecilities, and idiocies, and suicidal and other propensities and dispositions, leading to all manner of vice and crime.

The marriage of hereditary lunatics is a veritable Pandora's box of physical and moral evil." The least fit, then, are the most fertile, and the most fertile are subject to the common law of heredity, and the defects are transmitted to their offspring, often accentuated by the intermarriage which their circumstances favour or even necessitate.
But this is not all.