75 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" often told it is by maiden ladies " ! There is but one intelligent 

 attitude concerning them are they true or false ? Granting, 

 then, that these conditions are truthfully represented, what can 

 be said to the argument which Mr. Allen founds upon them ? 



I. Marriages are decreasing in many civilized countries. There 

 are local causes for this tendency among men, but the principal 

 and prevailing one with women is that they are passing from the 

 rule of force to a state of freedom, and use their newly found lib- 

 erty to reject what seems to hamper and handicap them. They 

 are emerging from the condition in which marriage is consequent 

 upon physical or social constraint, and they have not generally 

 arrived at the point where it is for them the result of deliberate 

 choice or response to natural instinct. In China, India, Persia, 

 and Arabia, where marriages are still controlled by force, the 

 number would be diminished at once, without the influence of 

 higher education or industrial training, were the women allowed 

 simple freedom of choice.* This decrease would not indicate 

 "the dulling of feminine instinct," but the vitality of it since 

 marriages are made there in defiance of natural selection, and 

 represent the worst condition of servitude. In more civilized 

 states the popularity of marriage does not depend wholly upon 

 the way in which women regard it, but upon the way in which it 

 is treated by men. The laws of some countries render it easier 

 for a man to live illegitimately with a woman than to marry 

 her ; f true marriage is discouraged by social usage and dishon- 

 ored by false philosophy. Few thoughtful minds will deny that 

 the customs which render it difficult for a young man to marry, 

 which send him hither and thither to gain a fortune, succeed in a 

 profession, or dissipate his strength, when he should be choosing 

 his sweetheart, are harmful, and divert men " from the true prob- 

 lem of their sex to fix it on side issues of comparative unimpor- 

 tance." 



Boys, as well as girls, should be taught that the full meaning of 

 human life is missed unless they deserve and find a fitting mate. 

 Authors who represent wifehood and maternity f as onerous and 

 unattractive, however necessary, or who surround illicit and in- 



* It is related that in 1878 eight young girls living near Canton, having been betrothed, 

 arrayed themselves one evening in fine attire, bound themselves together, and plunged into 

 the river to avoid marriage. 



f In Germany, where marriage is forbidden the younger soldiers, the birth statistics are 

 disadvantageous to the state. 



\ Some English conservatives discourse on these topics in a strain wholly abhorrent to 

 healthy women. They write of "the inexorable laiv from which, however distasteful, a 

 woman can not escape " ; " the stem law that makes women wives and mothers." One would 

 imagine from them that marriage and motherhood made a yawning grave of hope and aspi- 

 ration. Normal women, who have passed through these experiences, use no woful tones 

 in description. 



