Such assortative mating
means that the offspring will usually be well endowed with a talent.
Finally, young people should be taught a greater appreciation of the
lasting qualities of comradeship, for which the purely emotional factors
that make up mere sexual attraction are far from offering a satisfactory
substitute.
It will not be out of place here to point out that a change in the
social valuation of reputability and honor is greatly needed for the
better working of sexual selection. The conspicuous waste and leisure
that Thorstein Veblen points out as the chief criterion of reputability
at present have a dubious relation to high mental or moral endowment,
far less than has wealth. There is much left to be done to achieve a
meritorious distribution of wealth. The fact that the insignia of
success are too often awarded to trickery, callousness and luck does not
argue for the abolition altogether of the financial success element in
reputability, in favor of a "dead level" of equality such as would
result from the application of certain communistic ideals. Distinctions,
rightly awarded, are an aid, not a hindrance to sexual selection, and
effort should be directed, from the eugenic point of view, no less to
the proper recognition of true superiority than to the elimination of
unjustified differentiations of reputability.
Pages:
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376