MARRIAGE AMONG EMINENT MEN. 329 



There is thus little or no avoidance of marriage peculiar to gifted 

 men. The contrary belief seems one of the numerous scientific super- 

 stitions. 



If we examine their age at marriage, we may justify the claim that 

 gifted men marry not only almost as commonly, but also as early as 

 the rank and file. Of those who have reached the age of forty-four and 

 married before forty-five, 22.2 per cent, married before the age of 25, 

 43.3 per cent, between 25 and 30, 18.7 per cent, between 30 and 35 

 and 15.8 per cent, between 35 and 45. The corresponding figures for 

 the general male population of the United States are 22.7, 41.0, 23.1 and 

 13.1. 



Obviously the gifted men marry at almost the same ages as the 

 multitude. Even the slight differences observable might vanish if the 

 statistics were freed from the tendency to report the date of a second 

 rather than a first marriage. 



The facts concerning the marriages of gifted men in America seem 

 to disprove another common dogma — that the age at marriage has been 

 rapidly increasing in the case of professional men because of the in- 

 creasing amount of preparation required for success in professional 

 life under present conditions. If we take all the gifted men born before 

 1865, who have married before 35, and compute the average age at mar- 

 riage of those born before 1820, from '20 to '30, from '30 to '40, etc., 

 we find that the age of marriage for gifted men has probably advanced 

 less than six months in a half century. This is a liberal estimate and 

 is surely not alarming. I find no means of ascertaining the change 

 in the marriage age of the general male population during the same 

 period, but there is no evidence that professional men differ from au- 

 thors, artists or men in business. 



These facts witness to the fundamental conservatism of human 

 nature. The casual observer is impressed by the appearance of changes 

 — of revolutions and reformations in human ways ; he fancies that some 

 force in the environment is making or marring our customs. But 

 the inborn make-up of men is always a factor and one that remains 

 unaltered through many half centuries. 



