Dear Albus,

So I have now permission to call you as Albus, because our lips have touched? I wonder what must I do to receive permission to call you by a nickname? Perhaps the next time I see you I will find out… Alby.

Certainly our friendship is strong enough to survive whatever comes. We are both strong people.

You ask, what criteria will be applied to determine which people are fit to reproduce, and who will make this decision? You are under the impression that this poses a difficult problem, yet this question is the most easily answered of all.

Let me ask you, Albus, what qualities you will find attractive in a person? No doubt you would mention physical qualities such as a regular and symmetrical face with sensitive features and a healthy, strong, well-developed body free of defects, disease or signs of malnutrition. You would also consider mental qualities such as intelligence, quick wit, memory, self-restraint, virtue, moral character and so on. In fact, most members of the population would agree with you on these points.

Assessment of who is fit to reproduce is occurring around us constantly. Whenever a man considers his future bride, or a woman considers her future husband, weighing up the different calculations, they are applying the criteria of which I speak. No one wants their children to be a cripple, an imbecile or some other deformed individual.

This instinct for selecting good mates was instilled by Nature for the preservation and improvement of the human race. Artificial culture interferes with our natural instinct, for example by teaching us to feel sorry for inferior individuals, under the name of kindness or sympathy. We must realize that by giving inferior individuals more than they deserve, we are being the opposite of kind, because we are prolonging their misery and ultimately leading to the degradation of the race. In the process we will make everyone miserable and wretched as the lowest members of society. Is this kindness? Surely it is better for the superior few to prosper than for all to be dragged to the lowest level of existence in the name of "fairness"?

So now we have established that criteria exist for selecting good individuals for reproduction. The next problem you raise is enforcement. You say it would be a "gross violation of bodily integrity" for the state to interfere with the right to reproduce. However, the state violates bodily integrity of individuals all the time in order to protect society. We put people in prison, which violates their right to freedom of movement, freedom of expression and freedom of association. This is justified because it is necessary to protect society from undesirable people.

Now consider this. If a man is a thief, a murderer or a rapist, he can only harm a small number of people. If a man is a spy or a traitor to the state, he can harm an entire country. However, if a man is an inferior individual with defective breeding, by reproducing he is actually harming the entire future generations of the human race! Thus he is causing a far greater amount of harm. If the state is justified in imprisoning a murderer or traitor, how much more justified is it to prevent a degenerate individual from reproducing and jeopardising our whole future?

So you see Albus, for the state to intervene in this way is not a violation of integrity, no more than other necessary evils such as imprisonment and execution.

Have I answered your concerns to your satisfaction?

Faithfully,

Gellert

A/N:

Sorry for the very short chapter. I've entered the last month of my semester so I'm going to be very busy for a while. Next update will probably be in two weeks.