HUMAN SELECTION 521 



development of the race. The most careful and deliberate 

 choice of partners for life will be inculcated as the highest 

 social duty ; while the young women will be so trained as 

 to look with scorn and loathing on all men who in any way 

 wilfully fail in their duty to society — on idlers and malin- 

 gerers, on drunkards and liars, on the selfish, the cruel, or 

 the vicious. They will be taught that the happiness of 

 their whole lives will depend on the care and deliberation 

 with which they choose their husbands, and they will be 

 urged to accept no suitor till he has proved himself to be 

 worthy of respect by the place he holds and the character 

 he bears among his fellow-labourers in the public service. 



Under social conditions which render every woman ab- 

 solutely independent, so far as the necessaries and comforts 

 of existence are concerned, surrounded by the charms of 

 family life and the pleasures of society, which will be far 

 greater than anything we now realize when all will possess 

 the refinements derived from the best possible education, 

 and all will be relieved from sordid cares and the struggle 

 for mere existence, is it not in the highest degree probable 

 that marriage will rarely take place till the woman has had 

 three or four years' experience of the world after leaving 

 college — that is, till the age of 25, while it will very fre- 

 quently be delayed till 30 or upwards ? Now Mr. Galton 

 has shown, from the best statistics available, that if we 

 compare women married at 20 with those married at 29, 

 the proportionate fertility is about as 8 to 5. But this 

 difference, large as it is, only represents a portion of the 

 effect on the rate of increase of population caused by a 

 delay in the average period of marriage. For when the 

 age of marriage is delayed the time between successive 

 generations is correspondingly lengthened ; while a still 

 further effect is produced by the fact that the greater the 

 average age of mamage the fewer generations are alive 

 at the same time, and it is the combined effect of these three 

 factors that determines the actual rate of increase of the 

 population.^ 



But there is yet another factor tending to check the 



1 See Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development, p. 321 j 

 find Hereditary Genius, p, 353, 



