In the future educational program sex questions must hold an honorable place. Progress in this direction may be slow, because of the false shame, the prurient delicacy, now widely prevalent touching everything connected with the sexual life. Nor is it a light matter to brave orthodox sentiment in this regard. It is not always safe for the teacher, even in institutions deeming themselves modern, to deal frankly with the organic facts which are of vital concern to the human race. The folly of parents in leaving their children in ignorance of the laws of sex is notorious. Yet how much safer than ignorance is knowledge as a shield for innocence. The daughter will face the vicissitudes of life more securely if she has been told of the destiny that awaits her as wife and mother; if she has been warned of the snares with which lust has beset the path of womanhood. The son is likely to live a nobler life if he has learned to repudiate the dual standard of sexual morality which a spurious philosophy has set up; if he understands that "instincts" may be safely controlled; if he has been warned that selfish excesses within or without the marriage bond must be dearly paid for by the coming generations. Indeed, it is of the greatest moment to society that the young should be trained in the general laws of heredity. Everywhere men and women are marrying in utter contempt of the warnings of science. Domestic animals are literally better bred than human beings. Through ignorance and defiance of the rules of health, we are destroying our physical constitutions. Under the plea of "romantic love" we blindly yield to sexual attractions in choosing our mates, selfishly ignoring the welfare of the race. Is there not a higher ideal of conjugal choice? Experience shows that in wedlock natural and sexual selection should play a smaller and artificial selection a larger rôle.[844] The safety of the social body requires that a check be put upon the propagation of the unfit. Here the state has a function to perform. In the future much more than now, let us hope, the marriage of persons mentally delinquent or tainted by hereditary disease or crime will be legally restrained. Yet law can do relatively little. A reform of this kind must of necessity depend mainly upon a better educated popular sentiment; upon a higher altruism which shall be capable of present sacrifice for the permanent good of the race. "When human beings and families rationally subordinate their own interests as perfectly to the welfare of future generations as do animals under the control of instinct the world will have a more enduring type of family life than exists at present. This can only be accomplished by the development of controlling ideals which are supported not only by reason and intelligence but by ethical impulse and religious motive. This larger altruism which protects the permanent interests of the future against the more temporary values of the present must be of the heart as much as of the head.... In the mating of men and women, money, social position, worldly expediency, the conventional and fictitious values so influential in these days, will count for much less, while organic health and efficiency, character, unselfish devotion to high ideals, to the great world interests will count for far more. In this obedience to ideals so farsighted, romantic love will not be lost in any way, as some seem to fear. Men and women will not choose one another in cold blood simply because intelligence and reason point the way, but human sentiment and every romantic quality will be enhanced when permanent and future interests are furthered by a saner and finer human choice."[845]