of medical examiners, concerning (1) Family and Past History (syphilis, consumption, alcoholism, nervous, and mental diseases), and (2) Status Presens (thorough examination of all the organs); if satisfactory, a certificate of matrimonial eligibility would then be granted.  It is pointed out that a measure of this kind would render unnecessary the acts passed by some States for the punishment by fine, or imprisonment, of the concealment of disease.  Ellen Key also considers (Liebe und Ehe, p. 436) that each party at marriage should produce a certificate of health.  “It seems to me just as necessary,” she remarks, elsewhere (Century of the Child, Ch.  I), “to demand medical testimony concerning capacity for marriage, as concerning capacity for military service.  In the one case, it is a matter of giving life; in the other, of taking it, although certainly the latter occasion has hitherto been considered as much the more serious.”

The certificate, as usually advocated, would be a private but necessary legitimation of the marriage in the eyes of the civil and religious authorities.  Such a step, being required for the protection alike of the conjugal partner and of posterity, would involve a new legal organization of the matrimonial contract.  That such demands are so frequently made, is a significant sign of the growth of moral consciousness in the community, and it is good that the public should be made acquainted with the urgent need for them.  But it is highly undesirable that they should, at present, or, perhaps, ever, be embodied in legal codes.  What is needed is the cultivation of the feeling of individual responsibility, and the development of social antagonism towards those individuals who fail to recognize their responsibility.  It is the reality of marriage, and not its mere legal forms, that it is necessary to act upon.

The voluntary method is the only sound way of approach in this matter.  Duclaux considered that the candidate for marriage should possess a certificate of health in much the same way as the candidate for life assurance, the question of professional secrecy, as well as that of compulsion, no more coming into one question than into the other.  There is no reason why such certificates, of an entirely voluntary character, should not become customary among those persons who are sufficiently enlightened to realize all the grave personal, family, and social issues involved in marriage.  The system of eugenic certification, as originated and developed by Galton, will constitute a valuable instrument for raising the moral consciousness in this matter.  Galton’s eugenic certificates would deal mainly with the natural virtues of superior hereditary breed—­“the public recognition of a natural nobility”—­but they would include the question of personal health and personal aptitude.[457]