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Abstract
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By the above title I designate marriage in contravention of physiological law.
There obtains in society a very general conviction that consanguine marriages deteriorate the species by entailing on progeny idiotcy, other mental imperfections and constitutions so depraved as readily to develop scrofulous forms of disease; and yet it is strongly to be suspected that the truth of this general conviction has never been established. Some fifteen years ago I was induced to suspect the existence of a physio logical incompatibility between the sexes in relation to progeny and thus I was induced to adopt a course of action and careful observation of progenitors and progeny, and the result has been a thorough conviction that my suspicion was well founded,--that a physiological incompatibility in relation to progeny obtains very frequently between the sexes, and it consists in this:--certain of the human temperaments are incompatible in relation to progeny. This a priori appears to be much more probable than that consanguinity should produce an incompatibilty, because temperament is a positive condition and therefore may become an agent; but consan guinity is merely a relation which can exert no agency.
I nominate this physiological incompatibility, physiological incest; and to the extent of my knowledge it is the only incest nature has established; and to this incest do I attribute all the idiots, much of the insanity, all genuine phthisis, and all scrofulous forms of disease, half of the juvenile mortality, and a large percentage of the premature adult mortality which now afflict the human race. 1 admit however, that these evils do attend occasionally consanguine progenitors, and as consan guine parties are not physiologically exceptions to the race, it follows that they are as vulnerable to physiological incest as other parties, but I deny that consanguinity has any agency in this relation.
That system of the temperaments which I adopt, with some modification, is that which has descended to us, probably from Hippocrates or Galen. It embraces four temperaments, namely: the Sanguine, the Bilious, the Lymphatic, and the Melancholic. The description which has been had of the Melancholic so strongly indicates a pathological condition that physiologists seem to have, by a common consent, ceased to regard it as a physiological one; nevertheless, early in my investigations of the temperaments, I became convinced that humanity was distinguished by four constitutional condi tions or 'temperaments, and after seven years of unceasing observation, I discovered an individual whom I sapposed to
Language: en |