336 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



thus, there is a net excess of multiplication on the part of the 

 lower at the expense of the upper categories. 



One of the reasons for the late marriage of the cultured and 

 educated classes is, as we have seen, to be found in our economic 

 conditions. These have raised the standard of life and in- 

 creased the keenness of competition, and thus have made greater 

 effort necessary in order to reach a pecuniary situation per- 

 mitting of the founding of a family ; and although they react 

 with greater intensity on the cultured and educated classes than 

 on the labouring classes, they nevertheless have a certain influ- 

 ence on the whole social organism. This influence is expressed 

 in the statement of the Registrar-General to the effect that the 

 mean age of marriage for the entire community is steadily on 

 the ascendant ; and what is true for England is true for all those 

 Western countries whose economic development is proceeding 

 under the same conditions. These are facts which it is the 

 duty of the sociologist to take note of ; for late marriage is not 

 only undesirable as a general rule, because of its effects on fer- 

 tility; but we must also bring the phenomenon of more pro- 

 longed general celibacy into connection with our remarks in 

 Chapter III. concerning syphilis. Syphilis, we said, is con- 

 tracted in the majority of cases between the ages of eighteen 

 and twenty-five — that is to say, by persons destined to marry 

 and to produce the future generations of our race. And no one 

 even cursorily acquainted with the dangers of syphilis for others 

 beside the individual affected — dangers which we insisted upon 

 in the previous chapter — can doubt that this postponement of 

 marriage until an even later age will have a marked influence on 

 the increase of syphilis ; and consequently that the social dangers 

 of the disease, already great, will thereby be multiplied.^ 



1 " In the middle classes a man's income seldom reaches its maximum 

 till he is forty or fifty years old, and the expense of bringing up his children 

 is heavy, and lasts for many years. The artisan earns nearly as much at 

 twenty-one as he ever does, unless he rises to a responsible post, but he 



