334 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



divided into two groups, those who married spinsters and those 

 who married widows, the mean of the recorded ages of each group 

 shows an increase on the corresponding mean in the previous 

 year." So that we may take it as a proved fact that the mean 

 age of marriage for the community as a whole is rising. 



We have given above some statistics which show that the 

 lower classes marry, as a general rule, earlier than do the cul- 

 tured classes, from which the liberal and learned professions are 

 recruited. That the result is a greater fertility of the lower at 

 the expense of the cultured classes is an a priori deduction from 

 a well-known physiological law. It might, however^ be urged 

 that the greater mortality among the artisan and labouring 

 classes compensates for their greater fertility ; and we may 

 certainly see in the excessive mortality among these classes a 

 reason for their fertility, since we know that the fertility of a 

 species is in direct ratio to the chances of destruction to which 

 its members are exposed. It is extremely difficult to draw from 

 the statistics of comparative mortality among the different social 

 classes a definite conclusion regarding the proportion of mor- 

 tality to fertility in each of these classes ; but it appears certain 

 that the greater mortality- rate among the lower classes does not 

 bear the same proportion to the lower mortality-rate of the 

 upper that the respective birth-rates bear to each other ; in 

 other words, despite greater mortality, there is a net excess of 

 fertility among the lower classes. Dr. Schallmayer, after a 

 detailed examination of the figures given by numerous 

 statisticians concerning the proportion of the mortality-rate 

 among different classes of the population, comes to the fol- 

 lowing conclusion : " We must conclude that the results obtained 

 up till the present do not give us an entirely accurate idea of 

 the degree of the difference between the rate of child mortality 

 among the upper and that among the lower classes. . . . But if 

 one wishes to draw conclusions from the results detailed above, 

 one will have to admit that the rate of difference between the 



