Instruments of Crime.—"The means through which abortions are effected are various. Sometimes it is through potent drugs, extensively advertised in ne… - John Harvey Kellogg

According to this rule, a man or woman or large combativeness should select a partner equally inclined to antagonism; then we should have what? The elements of a happy contented, harmonious life? No, instead, either a speedy lawsuit for divorce, or a continual domestic broil, the nearest approach to mundane purgatory possible. The selfish, close-fisted, miserly money-catcher must marry a woman equally sordid and stingy. Then together they could hoard up, for moths and rust to destroy, or for interested relatives to quarrel over, the pictorial greenback and the glittering dollar, each scrimping the other down to the finest point above starvation and freezing, and finally dying, to be forgotten as soon as dead by their fellow-men, and sent among the goats at the great assizes. A shiftless sprendthrift must choose for a helpmeet (?) an equally slovenly, thriftless wife. A man with a crotchet should select a partner with the same morbid fancy. A man whose whole mental composition gravitates behind his ears, must mind a mate with the same animal disposition. An individual whose mental organization is sadly unbalance, is advised to seek for a wife a woman with the same deficiencies and abnormalities. Any one can see at a glance the domestic disasters which such a plan of proceeding would entail. Men and women of unbalanced temperaments would become more unbalanced. An individual of erroneous tendencies, instead of having the constant check of the example and admonitions of a mate of opposite tendencies, would be, by constant example, hastened onward in his sinful ways. Thus, to all but a very small proportion of humanity, the married state would be one of infelicity and degeneration. And what would be the progeny of such unions? The peculiarities and propensities of the parents, instead of being modified and perhaps obliterated in the children by corresponding difference sin character, would be doubly exaggerated. The children of selfish parents would be thieves; those of spendthrifts, beggars; those of crotchety parents, monomaniacs; those born of sensual parents, beastly debauchees. A few generations of such a degenerating process would either exterminate the race of drive it back to Darwin’s ancestral ape. It must not be inferred, from our strictures upon the theory mentioned, that we would advocate the opposite course, that is, the contraction of marriage by individuals of wholly dissimilar tastes, aims, and temperaments. Such alliances would doubtless be quite as wretched in their results as those of an opposite character. It is with this as with nearly all other subjects; the true course lies between the two extremes. Parties who are negotiating a life partnership should be careful to assure themselves that there exists a sufficient degree of congeniality of temperament to make such close and continued association agreeable.

Were we disposed to define more specifically the conditions necessary to secure the most harmonious matrimonial unions, it would be useless to do so; for unions of this sort never have been, and never will be-with rare exceptions-formed in accordance with a prescribed method independent of any emotional bias. Nor is it probable that such a plan would result in remedying, in any appreciable degree, existing evils. It is a fact too patent to be ignored that a very large share of the unhappiness in the world arises from ill-mated marriages; but it is also true that nearly the whole of this unhappiness might be averted if the parties themselves would endeavor to lessen the differences between them by mutual approximation.

Application of the Law of Heredity.-A moment’s consideration of the physiology of heredity will disclose a sufficient reason why marriage should be deferred until the development of the body is wholly complete. The matrimonial relation implies reproduction. Reproduction is effected through the union of the ovum with the zoosperm. These elements, as we have already seen, are complete representatives of the individuals producing them, being composed-as supposed-of minute gemmules which are destined to be developed into cell and organs in the new being, each preserving its resemblance to the cell within the parent which produced it. The perfection of the new being, then, must be largely dependent on the integrity and perfection of the sexual elements. If the body is still incomplete, the reproductive elements must also be incomplete; and, in consequence, the progeny must be equally immature.