Weeds in the Garden of Marriage

Abstract

IT perhaps might have been called more truly “Weeds in the Garden of Race Progress”, for the very institution of marriage—as cultivated by Church and State—is one of the rankest weeds Mr. Pitt-Rivers finds. In his own words, his book is “a plea for a little more thinking”, and it is backed by forcibly stated reasons for thinking as he thinks, and for seeing with him that a thoughtful application of the principles of eugenics to our economic and race problems is our only salvation; that, in fact, we are subject to compulsory restriction of reproduction, and eugenics only proposes to change the method of restriction to sterilisation rather than taxation, and shift its operation from the healthy to the feeble.