[77] The chief source of information on these Courts is André le
Chapelain's _De Arte Amatoria_. Boccaccio made use of this work, though
without mentioning the author's name, in his own _Dialogo d' Amore_.
[78] A. Méray, _La Vie au Temps des Cours d'Amour_, 1876.
[79] Remy de Gourmont, _Dante, Béatrice et la Poésie Amoureuse_, 1907, p.
32.
[80] Niphus (born about 1473), a physician and philosopher of the Papal
Court, wrote in his _De Pulchro_, sometimes considered the first modern
treatise on æsthetics, a minute description of Joan of Aragon, whose
portrait, traditionally ascribed to Raphael, is in the Louvre. The
famous work of Firenzuola (born 1493) entitled _Dialogo delle Bellezze
delle Donne_, was published in 1548. It has been translated into English
by Clara Bell under the title _On the Beauty of Women_.
[81] See, for example, Edith Coulson James, _Bologna: Its History,
Antiquities and Art_, 1911.
[82] See, for an interesting account of the position of women in the
Italian Renaissance, Burckhardt, _Die Kultur der Renaissance_, Part V,
ch. VI.
[83] I may quote the following remarks from a communication I have
received from a University man: "I am prepared to show women, and to
expect from them, precisely the same amount of consideration as I show
to or expect from other men, but I rather resent being expected to make
a preferential difference. For example, in a crowded tram I see no more
adequate reason for giving up my seat to a young and healthy girl than
for expecting her to give up hers to me; I would do so cheerfully for an
old person of either sex on the ground that I am probably better fit to
stand the fatigue of 'strap-hanging,' and because I recognize that some
respect is due to age; but if persons get into over-full vehicles they
should not expect first-comers to turn out of their seats merely because
they happen to be men." This writer acknowledges, indeed, that he is not
very sensitive to the erotic attraction of women, but it is probable
that the changing status of women will render the attitude he expresses
more and more common among men.
[84] _Ante_, p. 58.
[85] "Women then were queens," as Taine writes (_L'Ancien Régime_, Vol.
I, p. 219), and he gives references to illustrate the point.
[86] Goethe, _Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre_, Book II, ch. I.
[87] Havelock Ellis, _The Soul of Spain_, chap. III, "The Women of
Spain."
[88] Grete Meisel-Hess, _Die Sexuelle Krise_, 1909, pp. 148, 168.
[89] "La Morale Sexuelle," _Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_,
January, 1907.
V
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF A FALLING BIRTH-RATE
The Fall of the Birth-rate in Europe generally--In England--In
Germany--In the United States--In Canada--In Australasia--"Crude"
Birth-rate and "Corrected" Birth-rate--The Connection between High
Birth-rate and High Death-rate--"Natural Increase" measured by
Excess of Births over Deaths--The Measure of National
Well-being--The Example of Russia--Japan--China--The Necessity of
viewing the Question from a wide Standpoint--The Prevalence of
Neo-Malthusian Methods--Influence of the Roman Catholic
Church--Other Influences lowering the Birth-rate--Influence of
Postponement of Marriage--Relation of the Birth-rate to Commercial
and Industrial Activity--Illustrated by Russia, Hungary, and
Australia--The Relation of Prosperity to Fertility--The Social
Capillarity Theory--Divergence of the Birth-rate and the
Marriage-rate--Marriage-rate and the Movement of Prices--Prosperity
and Civilization--Fertility among Savages--The lesser Fertility of
Urban Populations--Effect of Urbanization on Physical
Development--Why Prosperity fails permanently to increase
Fertility--Prosperity creates Restraints on Fertility--The Process
of Civilization involves Decreased Fertility--In this Respect it is
a Continuation of Zoological Evolution--Large Families as a Stigma
of Degeneration--The Decreased Fertility of Civilization a General
Historical Fact--The Ideals of Civilization to-day--The East and
the West.
I
One of the most interesting phenomena of the early part of the
nineteenth century was the immense expansion of the people of the
so-called "Anglo-Saxon" race.[90] This expansion coincided with that
development of industrial and commercial activity which made the
English people, who had previously impressed foreigners as somewhat lazy
and drunken, into "a nation of shopkeepers." It also coincided with the
end of the supremacy of France in Europe; France had succeeded to Spain
as the leading power in Europe, and had on the whole maintained a
supremacy which Napoleon brought to a climax, and, in doing so, crushed.
The growing prosperity of England represented an entirely new wave of
influence, mainly economic in character, but not less forceful than that
of Spain and of France had been; and this prosperity was reflected in
the growth of the nation. The greater part of the Victorian period was
marked by this expansion of population, which reached its highest point
in the early years of the second half of that period. While the
population of England was thus increasing with ever greater rapidity at
home, at the same time the English-speaking peoples overspread the whole
of North America, and colonized the fertile fringe of Australia. It was,
on a still larger scale, a phenomenon similar to that which had occurred
three hundred years earlier, when Spain covered the world and founded an
empire upon which, as Spaniards proudly boasted, the sun never set.
When now, a century later, we survey the situation, not only has
industrial and commercial activity ceased to be a special attribute of
the Anglo-Saxons--since the Germans have here shown themselves to
possess qualities of the highest order, and other countries are rapidly
rivalling them--but within the limits of the English-speaking world
itself the English have found formidable rivals in the Americans.
Underlying, however, even these great changes there is a still more
fundamental fact to be considered, a fact which affects all branches of
the race; and that is, that the Anglo-Saxons have passed their great
epoch of expansion and that their birth-rate is rapidly falling to a
normal level, that is to say, to the average level of the world in
general. Disregarding the extremely important point of the death-rate in
its bearing on the birth-rate, England is seen to possess a medium
birth-rate among European countries, not among the countries with a high
birth-rate, like Russia, Roumania, or Bulgaria, nor among those with a
low birth-rate, like Sweden, Belgium, and France. It was in this last
country that the movement of decline in the European birth-rate began,
and though the rate of decline has in France now become very gradual the
long period through which it has extended has placed France in the
lowest place, so far as Europe is concerned. In 1908 out of a total of
over 11,000,000 French families, in nearly 2,000,000 there were no
children, and in nearly 3,000,000 there was only one child.[91] The
general decline in the European birth-rate, during the years 1901-1905,
was only slight in Switzerland, Ireland and Spain, while it was large
not only in France, but in Italy, Servia, England and Wales, and
especially in Hungary (while, outside Europe, it was largest of all in
South Australia). Since 1905 there has been a further general decline
throughout Europe, only excepting Ireland, Bulgaria, and Roumania. In
Prussia in 1881-1885 the birth-rate was 37.4; in 1909 it was only 31.8;
while in the German Empire as a whole it is throughout lower than in
Prussia, though somewhat higher than in England. In Austria and Spain
alone of European countries during the twenty years between 1881 and
1901 was there any tendency for the fertility of wives to increase. In
all other countries there was a decrease, greatest in Belgium, next
greatest in France, then in England.[92]
If we consider the question, not on the basis of the crude birth-rate,
but of the "corrected" birth-rate, with more exact reference to the
child-producing elements in the population, as is done by Newsholme and
Stevenson,[93] we find that the greatest decline has taken place in New
South Wales, then in Victoria, Belgium, and Saxony, followed by New
Zealand. But France, the German Empire generally, England, and Denmark
all show a considerable fall; while Sweden and Norway show a fall,
which, especially in Norway, is slight. Norway illustrates the
difference between the "crude" and the "corrected" birth-rate; the crude
birth-rate is lower than that of Saxony, but the corrected birth-rate is
higher. Ireland, again, has a very low crude birth-rate, but the
population of child-bearing age has a high birth-rate, considerably
higher than that of England.
Thus while forty years ago it was usual for both the English and the
Germans to contemplate, perhaps with some complacency, the spectacle of
the falling birth-rate in France as compared with the high birth-rate in
England and Germany, we are now seen to be all marching along the same
road. In 1876 the English birth-rate reached its maximum of 36.3 per
thousand; while in France the birth-rate now appears almost to have
reached its lowest level. Germany, like England, now also has a falling
birth-rate, though it will take some time to sink to the English level.
The birth-rate for Germany generally is still much higher than for
England generally, but urbanization in Germany seems to have a greater
influence than in England in lowering the birth-rate, and for many years
past the birth-rate of Berlin has been lower than that of London. The
birth-rate in Germany has long been steadily falling, and the increase
in the population of Germany is due to a concomitant steady fall in the
death-rate, a fall to which there are inevitable natural limits.[94]
Moreover, as Flux has shown,[95] urbanization is going on at a greater
speed in Germany than in England, and practically the entire natural
increase of the German population for a quarter of a century has drifted
into the towns. But the death-rate of the young in German towns is far
higher than in English towns, and the first five years of life in
Germany produce as much mortality as the first twenty-five years in
England.[96] So that a thousand children born in England add far more to
the population than a thousand children born in Germany. The average
number of children per family in German towns is less than in English
towns of the same size. These results, reached by Flux, suggest that in
a few years' time the rate of increase in the German population will be
lower than it is at present in England. In England, since 1876, the
decline has been so rapid as to be equal to 20 per cent within a
generation, and in some of the large towns to 40 per cent. Against this
there has, indeed, to be set the general tendency during recent years
for the death-rate to fall also. But this saving of life has until
lately been effected mainly at the higher ages; there has been but
little saving of the lives of infants, upon whom the death-rate falls
most heavily. Accompanying this falling off in the number of children
produced there has often been, as we might expect, a fall in the
marriage-rate; but this has been less regular, and of late the
marriage-rate has sometimes been high when the birth-rate was low.[97]
There has, however, been a steady postponement of the average age at
which marriage takes place. On the whole, the main fact that emerges is,
that nowadays in England we marry less and have fewer children.
This is now a familiar fact, and perhaps it should not excite very great
surprise. England is an old and fairly stable country, and it may be
said that it would be unreasonable to expect its population to retain
indefinitely a high degree of fertility. Whether this is so or not,
there is the further consideration to be borne in mind that, during
nearly the whole of the Victorian period, emigration of the most
vigorous stocks took place to a very marked extent. It is not difficult
to see the influence of such emigration in connection with the greatly
diminished population of Ireland, as compared with Scotland; and we may
reasonably infer that it has had its part in the decreased fertility of
the United Kingdom generally.
But we encounter the remarkable fact that this decreased fertility of
the Anglo-Saxon populations is not confined to the United Kingdom. It is
even more pronounced in those very lands to which so many thousand
shiploads of our best people have been taken. In the United States the
question has attracted much attention, and there is little disagreement
among careful observers as to the main facts of the situation. The
question is, indeed, somewhat difficult for two reasons: the
registration of births is not generally compulsory in the United States,
and, even when general facts are ascertained, it is still necessary to
distinguish between the different classes of the population. Our
conclusions must therefore be based, not on the course of a general
birth-rate, but on the most reliable calculations, based on the census
returns and on the average size of the family at different periods, and
among different classes of the population. A bulletin of the Census
Bureau of the United States since 1860 was prepared a few years ago by
Walter F. Wilcox, of Cornell University. It determines from the data in
the census office the proportion of children to the number of women of
child-bearing age in the country at different periods, and shows that
there has been, on the whole, a fall from the beginning to the end of
the last century. Children under ten years of age constituted one-third
of the population at the beginning of the century, and at the end less
than one-fourth of the total population. Between 1850 and 1860 the
proportion of children to women between fifteen and forty-nine years of
age increased, but since 1860 it has constantly decreased. In 1860 the
number of children under five years of age to one thousand women between
fifteen and forty-nine years of age was 634; in 1900 it was only 474.
The proportion of children to potential mothers in 1900 was only
three-fourths as large as in 1860. In the north and west of the United
States the decline has been regular, while in the south the change has
been less regular and the decline less marked. A comparison is made
between the proportion of children in the foreign-born population and in
the American. The former was 710 to the latter's 462. In the coloured
population the proportion of children is greater than in the
corresponding white population.
There can be no doubt whatever that, from the eighteenth century to the
twentieth, there has been a steady decrease in the size of the American
family. Franklin, in the eighteenth century, estimated that the average
number of children to a married couple was eight; genealogical records
show that, while in the seventeenth century it was nearly seven, it was
over six at the end of the eighteenth century. Since then, as Engelmann
and others have shown, there has been a steady decrease in the size of
the family; in the earlier years of the nineteenth century there were
between four and five children to each marriage, while by the end of the
century the number of children had fallen to between four and but little
over one. Engelmann finds that there is but a very trifling difference
in this respect between the upper and the lower social classes; the
average for the labouring classes at St. Louis he finds to be about two,
and for the higher classes a little less. It is among the foreign-born
population, and among those of foreign parents, that the larger families
are found; thus Kuczynski, by analysing the census, finds that in
Massachusetts the average number of children to each married woman among
the American-born of all social classes is 2.7, while among the
foreign-born of all social classes it is 4.5. Moreover, sterility is
much more frequent among American women than among foreign women in
America. Among various groups in Boston, St. Louis, and elsewhere it
varies between 20 and 23 per cent, and in some smaller groups is even
considerably higher, while among the foreign-born it is only 13 per
cent. The net result is that the general natality of the United States
at the present day is about equal to that of France, but that, when we
analyse the facts, the fertility of the old native-born American
population of mainly Anglo-Saxon origin is found to be lower than that
of France. This element, therefore, is rapidly dwindling away in the
United States. The general level of the birth-rate is maintained by the
foreign immigrants, who in many States (as in New York, Massachusetts,
Michigan, and Minnesota) constitute the majority of the population, and
altogether number considerably over ten millions. Among these immigrants
the Anglo-Saxon element is now very small. Indeed, the whole North
European contingent among the American immigrants, which was formerly
nearly 90 per cent of the whole, has since 1890 steadily sunk, and the
majority of the immigrants now belong to the Central, Southern, and
Eastern European stocks. The racial, and, it is probable, the
psychological characteristics of the people of the United States are
thus beginning to undergo, not merely modification, but, it may almost
be said, a revolution. If, as we may well believe, the influence of the
original North-European racial elements--Anglo-Saxon, Dutch, and
French--still continues to persist in the United States, it can only be
the influence of a small aristocracy, maintained by intellect and
character.
When we turn to Canada, a land that is imposing, less by the actual size
of the population than by the vast tracts it possesses for its
development, the question has not yet been fully investigated; but such
facts and official publications as I have been able to obtain all
indicate that, in this matter, the English Canadians approximate to the
native Americans. In the United States it is the European immigrants who
maintain the general population at a productive level, and thus
indirectly oust the Anglo-Saxon element. In Canada the chief dividing
line is between the Anglo-Saxon element and the old French element in
the population; and here it is the French Canadians who are gaining
ground on the English elements in the population. Engelmann ascertained
that an examination of one thousand families in the records of Quebec
Life Assurance companies shows 9.2 children on the average to the French
Canadian child-bearing woman. It is found also from the records of the
French Canadian Society for Artisans that 500 families from town
districts, taken at random, show 9.06 children per family, and 500
families from country districts show 9.33 children per family.[98] It
must be remembered that this average, which is even higher than that
found in Russia, the most prolific of European countries, is not quite
the same as the number of children per marriage; but it indicates very
great fertility, while it may be noted also that sterile marriages are
comparatively rare among French Canadians, although among English
Canadians the proportion of childless families is found to be almost
exactly the same (nearly 20 per cent) as among the infertile Americans
of Massachusetts. The annual Reports of the Registrar-General of
Ontario, a province which is predominantly of Anglo-Saxon origin, show
that the average birth-rate during the decade 1899-1908 has been 22.3
per 1000; it must be noted, however, that there has been a gradual rise
from a rate of 19.4 in 1899 to one of 25.6 in 1908. The report of Mr.
Prévost, the recorder of vital statistics for the predominantly French
province of Quebec, shows much higher rates. The general birth-rate for
the province for the year 1901 is high, being 35.2, much higher than
that of England, and nearly as high as that of Germany. If, however, we
consider the thirty-five counties of the province in which the
population is almost exclusively French Canadian, we find that 35
represents almost the lowest average; as many as twenty-two of these
counties show a rate of over forty, and one (Yamaska) reached 51.52. It
is very evident that, in order to pull down these high birth-rates to
the general level of 35.2, we have to assume a much lower birth-rate
among the counties in which the English element is considerable. It must
be remembered, however, that infant mortality is high among the French
Canadians. The French Canadian Catholic, it has been said, would shrink
in horror from such an unnatural crime as limiting his family before
birth, but he sees nothing repugnant to God or man in allowing the
surplus excess of children to die after birth. In this he is at one with
the Chinese. Dr. E.P. La Chapelle, the President of the Provincial
Conseil d'Hygiène, wrote some years ago to Professor Davidson, in
answer to inquiries: "I do not believe it would be correct to ascribe
the phenomenon to any single cause, and I am convinced it is the result
of several factors. For one, the first cause of the heavy infant
mortality among the French Canadians is their very heavy natality, each
family being composed of an average of twelve children, and instances of
families of fifteen, eighteen, and even twenty-four children being not
uncommon. The super-abundance of children renders, I think, parents less
careful about them."[99]
The net result is a slight increase on the part of the French Canadians,
as compared with the English element in the province, as becomes clear
when we compare the proportion of the population of English, Scotch,
Irish, and all other nationalities with the total population of the
province, now and thirty years ago. In 1871 it was 21 per cent; in 1901
it was only 19 per cent. The decrease of the Anglo-Saxons may here
appear to be small, though it must be remembered that thirty years is
but a short period in the history of a nation; but it is significant
when we bear in mind that the English element has here been constantly
reinforced by immigrants (who, as the experience of the United States
shows, are by no means an infertile class), and that such reinforcement
cannot be expected to continue in the future.