race by the side of the married two-thirds. In comparative tables, which are extremely clear, A. Bertillon follows step by step the different fates of the married and unmarried, and he shows us that at every age the celibate population is struck by a mortality nearly twice as great as the other; that its births merely make up 45 per cent. of its annual losses; that it counts every year twice as many cases of madness, twice as many suicides, twice as many attempts on property, and twice as many murders and acts of personal violence. Consequently, the State has to maintain for this celibate population twice as many prisons, twice as many asylums and hospitals, twice as many undertakers,[1] etc. These revelations, absolutely true as raw results, caused a great commotion in the little public specially occupied with demography and sociology. Their alarm was soon calmed.
From his interesting work A. Bertillon had drawn conclusions which were very doubtful, taking surely the effect for the cause, by attributing the inferiority of the celibate population solely to its celibacy. If this be so, we have only to marry these weak ones in order to raise them; but the superiority of the married population, which on the whole is indisputable, does not necessarily imply the superiority of the marriage state.
It is in consequence of economic hindrances, and of physical or psychical inferiority, that, in the greater number of cases, people resign themselves to celibacy. Those who wish to marry cannot always do so, and A. Bertillon knew better than any one that the number of marriages, the age at marriage, the number of children by marriage, etc., depend in the mass not on individual caprice, but on causes altogether general. Setting aside money considerations—which are so powerful, and to which I shall presently return—and confining our calculation to persons of normal endowment, it is probable that there is more energy, more moral and intellectual vitality, in those who bravely face the risk of marriage than in the timid celibates; but it is certain that the celibate population, taken as a whole, includes the majority of the human waste of a country. At the time when A. Bertillon wrote his
- ↑ A. Bertillon, loc. cit.
