Laws which forbid cousins to marry are, then, on an unsound biological
basis. As Dr. Davenport remarks, "The marriage of Charles Darwin and
Emma Wedgewood would have been illegal and void, and their children
pronounced illegitimate in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri,
Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota,
Utah, Washington, Wyoming, and other states." The vitality and great
capacity of their seven children are well known. A law which would have
prevented such a marriage is certainly not eugenic.
We conclude, then, that laws forbidding cousin marriages are not
desirable. Since it would be well to make an effort to increase the
opportunities for further play of sexual selection, the lack of which is
sometimes responsible for cousin marriages, consanguineous marriage is
by no means to be indiscriminately indorsed. Still, if there are cases
where it is eugenically injurious, there are also cases where its
results are eugenically highly beneficial, as in families with no
serious defects and with outstanding ability.
The laws prohibiting marriage between persons having no blood
relationship but connected by marriage should all be repealed. The
best-known English instance, which was eugenically very
objectionable,--the prohibition of marriage between a man and his
deceased wife's sister,--has fortunately been extirpated, but laws still
exist, in some communities, prohibiting marriage between a man and his
stepchild or stepparent, between a woman and her deceased husband's
brother, and between the second husband or wife of a deceased aunt or
uncle and the wife or husband of a deceased nephew or niece, etc.
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