district where there has never been the most distant attempt at
sanitary improvement. He considers that the lessened mortality is the
direct result of marriage, and the more regular domestic habits which
attend that state. He admits, however, that the intemperate,
profligate, and criminal classes, whose duration of life is low, do not
commonly marry; and it must likewise be admitted that men with a weak
constitution, ill health, or any great infirmity in body or mind, will
often not wish to marry, or will be rejected. Dr. Stark seems to have
come to the conclusion that marriage in itself is a main cause of
prolonged life, from finding that aged married men still have a
considerable advantage in this respect over the unmarried of the same
advanced age; but every one must have known instances of men, who with
weak health during youth did not marry, and yet have survived to old
age, though remaining weak, and therefore always with a lessened chance
of life or of marrying. There is another remarkable circumstance which
seems to support Dr. Stark s conclusion, namely, that widows and
widowers in France suffer in comparison with the married a very heavy
rate of mortality; but Dr. Farr attributes this to the poverty and evil
habits consequent on the disruption of the family, and to grief. On the
whole we may conclude with Dr. Farr that the lesser mortality of
married than of unmarried men, which seems to be a general law, is
mainly due to the constant elimination of imperfect types, and to the
skilful selection of the finest individuals out of each successive
generation; the selection relating only to the marriage state, and
acting on all corporeal, intellectual, and moral qualities. (25. Dr.
Duncan remarks ( Fecundity, Fertility, etc. 1871, p. 334) on this
subject: At every age the healthy and beautiful go over from the
unmarried side to the married, leaving the unmarried columns crowded
with the sickly and unfortunate. ) We may, therefore, infer that sound
and good men who out of prudence remain for a time unmarried, do not
suffer a high rate of mortality.
If the various checks specified in the two last paragraphs, and perhaps
others as yet unknown, do not prevent the reckless, the vicious and
otherwise inferior members of society from increasing at a quicker rate
than the better class of men, the nation will retrograde, as has too
often occurred in the history of the world. We must remember that
progress is no invariable rule. It is very difficult to say why one
civilised nation rises, becomes more powerful, and spreads more widely,
than another; or why the same nation progresses more quickly at one
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