class, this being the only test of nobility that has any weight with our people. If a man or woman neglects this law in the selection of wife or husband, he or she loses social caste and is degraded in the eyes of the nation. Love, we believe to be a true, pure and holy feeling, a love for the spirit and intellect rather than that carnal love for the body and worldly riches that was so prevalent in your day, and for thousands of years thereafter. By strictly adhering to this law of selection, we find that the offspring of intellectual people are more susceptible to develop an improved intellectual power. Marriage is not allowed between relations. The experience we had before us, of the evils arising from marriages between near relations in previous generations, which, without exception, produced and perpetuated diseased bodies, and decrepit and idiotic minds, caused this law to be enacted and rigidly adhered to. It is an understood unwritten law, that the further removed the husband and wife are in relationship the more pleased the parents and the state will be.
