re of two
different orders, physiological, and social or moral. That is to say, that
it is necessary, on the one hand, that physical maturity should have been
fully attained, and the sexual cells completely developed; while, on the
other hand, it is necessary that the man shall have become able to support
a family, and that both partners shall have received a training in life
adequate to undertake the responsibilities and anxieties involved in the
rearing of children. While there have been variations at different times,
it scarcely appears that, on the whole, the general opinion as to the best
age for procreation has greatly varied in Europe during many centuries.
Hesiod indeed said that a woman should marry about fifteen and a man about
thirty,[463] but obstetricians have usually concluded that, in the
interests alike of the parents and their offspring, the procreative life
should not begin in women before twenty and in men before
twenty-five.[464] After thirty in women and after thirty-five or forty in
men it seems probable that the best conditions for procreation begin to
decline.[465] At the present time, in England and several other civilized
countries, the tendency has been for the age of marriage to fall at an
increasingly late age, on the average some years later than that usually
fixed as the most favorable age for the commencement of the procreative
life. But, on the whole, the average seldom departs widely from the
accepted standard, and there seems no good reason why we should desire to
modify this general tendency.

At the same time, it by no means follows that wide variations,
under special circumstances, may not only be permissible, but
desirable. The male is capable of procreating, in some cases,
from about the age of thirteen until far beyond eighty, and at
this advanced age, the offspring, even if not notable for great
physical robustness, may possess high intellectual qualities.
(See e.g., Havelock Ellis, _A Study of British Genius_, pp. 120
et seq.) The range of the procreative age in women begins earlier
(sometimes at eight), though it usually ceases by fifty, or
earlier, in only rare cases continuing to sixty or beyond. Cases
have been reported of pregnancy, or childbirth, at the age of
fifty-nine (e.g., _Lancet_, Aug. 5, 1905, p. 419). Lepage
(_Comptes-rendus Societe d'Obstetrique de Paris_, Oct., 1903)
reports a case of a primipara of fifty-