pidly than the rise in the standard;
hence a decreasing age of marriage and a marriage-rate above the normal.
After about 1873, however, the means of satisfying the standard of
comfort no longer increased with the same rapidity, and then a new
factor, he thought, became important, viz. the increased intelligence of
the people."[134] This seems to be precisely the same view of the matter
as I have here sought to set forth; prosperity is not civilization, its
first tendency is to produce a reckless abandonment to the satisfaction
of the crudest impulses. But as prosperity develops it begins to
engender more complex ideals and higher standards; the inevitable result
is a greater forethought and restraint.[135]

If we consider, not the marriage-rate, but the average age at marriage,
and especially the age of the woman, which varies less than that of the
man, the results, though harmonious, would not be quite the same. The
general tendency as regards the age of girls at marriage is summed up by
Ploss and Bartels, in their monumental work on Woman, in the statement:
"It may be said in general that the age of girls at marriage is lower,
the lower the stage of civilization is in the community to which they
belong."[136] We thus see one reason why it is that, in an advanced stage
of civilization, a high marriage-rate is not necessarily associated
with a high birth-rate. A large number of women who marry late may have
fewer children than a smaller number who marry early.

We may see the real character of the restraints on fertility very well
illustrated by the varying birth-rate of the upper and lower social
classes belonging to the same community. If a high birth-rate were a
mark of prosperity or of advanced civilization, we should expect to find
it among the better social class of a community. But the reverse is the
case; it is everywhere the least prosperous and the least cultured
classes of a community which show the highest birth-rate. As we go from
the very poor to the very rich quarters of a great city--whether Paris,
Berlin, or Vienna--the average number of children to the family
diminishes regularly. The difference is found in the country as well as
in the towns. In Holland, for instance, whether in town or country,
there are 5.19 children per marriage among the poor, and only 4.50 among
the rich. In London it is notorious that the same difference appears;
thus Charles Booth, the greatest authority on the social conditio