208 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



between 196 and 150. The reason for this phenomenon is to 

 be found in the contrasted nature of the conditions in which 

 the two sexes are placed. The bachelor of forty-two is still a 

 relatively young man ; he has still the will to fight, or to take 

 refuge in those excitements which serve to cloak for a time the 

 realities of an existence deprived of any permanent value ; he 

 has still strength and energy enough to hope. But the spinster 

 of forty-two is already an old woman. She has no longer any 

 hope of fulfilling the highest duties of her sex — the duties of 

 wife and mother ; the hope which can still spur the bachelor of 

 forty-two to action, and inspire him with courage and ardour, 

 is lost to the spinster. Between the bachelor of forty-two and 

 the bachelor of sixty lies an immense gulf — a gulf not to be 

 measured only by eighteen short years, but a gulf which separates 

 the man full of hope, activity, and vigour from the man em- 

 bittered by disappointment, disillusioned, and hlasL But the 

 spinster of forty-two has already been disillusioned ; she has 

 nothing further to hope for ; the days of enjoyment, of aspira- 

 tion, of faith in life, of ideahsm, have already given way to 

 days of disappointment and worry. Whether she be forty or 

 sixty, the spinster has no further hope of founding a family ; 

 between the spinster of forty and the spinster of sixty there is 

 no such difference as that between the bachelor of forty and 

 the bachelor of sixty. Hence, we can understand the fact that 

 the suicide-rate among spinsters of sixty is but slightly in excess 

 of that among spinsters of forty-two ; whereas between the two 

 corresponding categories of bachelors the difference in the 

 suicide-rate is very pronounced. 



If we now look at the categories of widowers, we shall 

 observe that the widowers wMi children have a suicide-rate of 

 937 per miUion. The average age of widowers in general 

 is sixty-one years 8^ months. If we compare the suicide-rate 

 of widowers with children with that of married men without 

 children, we see that the position of the former is relatively 



