611. iv The Science of Eugenics people to form attachments, to marry, and to rear offspring without discovering later on that their mate springs from a hopelessly tainted family, and that their children must be born in the world biologically disinherited and everlastingly condemned to eke out their existence in association with the lower levels of human existence. Social Influence and Responsibility When we say that marriage is coming to be more and more an affair of the state, that the breeding, training, and education of children is becoming more and more an affair of society as a whole, we merely mean that the state - society - must come to take more of an interest in the encouragement of normal, scientific, sensible, and romantic love matches; while at the same time it seeks to repress and decrease the enormous over-reproduction and multiplication of defectives and degenerates - the offspring of tainted parents - who must at best struggle through life handicapped at every turn, many of whom must rapidly and surely sink to the lower levels of society, to fill our jails and prisons, to crowd our brothels and congest our asylums. No Class or Social Distinction Eugenics is not a matter of encouraging the reproduction of aristocrats. It knows no social definition nor bounds. It aims only at the production of the more especially mentally fit and the nervously strong, while not overlooking the desirability of physical fitness and moral responsibility. Eugenics must not be confused with Hygienics. To speak of marriages performed on the basis of medical certificates, which attest that the contracting parties are free from contagious disorders and social diseases as being eugenic marriages is a decided mistake. They are hygienic marriages.