Note 155 — Front matter (continued 4)

Thus we read in a small popular periodical: "I am prepared to back human nature against all the cranks in Christendom. Human nature will endure a faddist so long as he does not interfere with things it prizes. One of these things is the right to select its partner for life. If a man loves a girl he is not going to give her up because she happens to have an aunt in a lunatic asylum or an uncle who has epileptic fits," etc. In the same way it may be said that a man will allow nothing to interfere with his right to eat such food as he chooses, and is not going to give up a dish he likes because it happens to be peppered with arsenic. It may be so, let us grant, among savages. The growth of civilization lies in ever-extended self-control guided by foresight.