MANIFESTED IN HUMAN SOCIETY 123 



are content to be childless in spite of the fact that they 

 are well able to support children, and have wealth and 

 sometimes titles to leave them ? The number of children 

 always varies inversely with the capacity to support them, 

 and although the theory of social capillarity has some 

 application to the middle classes, it has no application to 

 the very wealthy. According to that theory the smallest 

 families should be found among the lower middle classes 

 among those of limited means but large ambitions, who 

 are just getting their heads above the crowd. But these 

 people seem to have larger families on the average than 

 the wealthiest classes. The best test, of course, is provided 

 by the number of completely sterile marriages, but owing 

 to the failure of statisticians to realise this, no systematic 

 investigation of this aspect of the question has been 

 undertaken. Yet it does seem certain that there is a 

 steady rise in the proportion of completely sterile mar- 

 riages as the birthrate falls. In France the proportion 

 appears to be about 20 per cent., with 25 per cent, 

 among the wealthier classes, while we have already 

 seen that among the abler and intellectual classes in 

 most countries it appears to range from 25 to 33 

 per cent., whereas completely infertile marriages are 

 said to be very rare among such fertile races as the 

 Philippines and the French-Canadians. But this matter 

 of the percentage of completely sterile marriages should 

 receive the most careful investigation by statisticians. 

 For the rest it need only be said that the phenomena 

 displayed in Paris and Berlin are common to all the 

 countries which have been overtaken by the decline of 

 the birthrate. 



In view of the immense proportion of childless marriages 

 in France and what has already been said about the 

 " demographic woman," it will be useful and instructive 



