morality, namely, the approbation of our fellow-men the strengthening
of our sympathies by habit example and imitation reason experience, and
even self-interest instruction during youth, and religious feelings.
A most important obstacle in civilised countries to an increase in the
number of men of a superior class has been strongly insisted on by Mr.
Greg and Mr. Galton (19. Fraser s Magazine, Sept. 1868, p. 353.
Macmillan s Magazine, Aug. 1865, p. 318. The Rev. F.W. Farrar
( Fraser s Magazine, Aug. 1870, p. 264) takes a different view.),
namely, the fact that the very poor and reckless, who are often
degraded by vice, almost invariably marry early, whilst the careful and
frugal, who are generally otherwise virtuous, marry late in life, so
that they may be able to support themselves and their children in
comfort. Those who marry early produce within a given period not only a
greater number of generations, but, as shewn by Dr. Duncan (20. On the
Laws of the Fertility of Women, in Transactions of the Royal
Society, Edinburgh, vol. xxiv. p. 287; now published separately under
the title of Fecundity, Fertility, and Sterility, 1871. See, also,
Mr. Galton, Hereditary Genius, pp. 352-357, for observations to the
above effect.), they produce many more children. The children,
moreover, that are borne by mothers during the prime of life are
heavier and larger, and therefore probably more vigorous, than those
born at other periods. Thus the reckless, degraded, and often vicious
members of society, tend to increase at a quicker rate than the
provident and generally virtuous members. Or as Mr. Greg puts the case:
The careless, squalid, unaspiring Irishman multiplies like rabbits:
the frugal, foreseeing, self-respecting, ambitious Scot, stern in his
morality, spiritual in his faith, sagacious and disciplined in his
intelligence, passes his best years in struggle and in celibacy,
marries late, and leaves few behind him. Given a land originally
peopled by a thousand Saxons and a thousand Celts and in a dozen
generations five-sixths of the population would be Celts, but
five-sixths of the property, of the power, of the intellect, would
belong to the one-sixth of Saxons that remained. In the eternal
struggle for existence, it would be the inferior and LESS favoured
race that had prevailed and prevailed by virtue not of its good
qualities but of its faults.
There are, however, some checks to this downward tendency. We have seen
that the intemperate suffer from a high rate of mortality, and the
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