A.,
M.B., M.Sc., Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy in the University of
Oxford.
[12] From the writer's paper, "The Human Mother," in the Report of the
Proceedings of the National Conference on Infantile Mortality, 1908, p.
30.
[13] It it well to quote here the most recent comment of the late Sir
Francis Galton upon this subject. It is to be found in his celebrated
Huxley lecture, now published by the Eugenics Education Society,
together with much of the illustrious author's other work, under the
title, "Essays in Eugenics." The passage relevant to our discussion runs
as follows:--
"There appears to be a considerable difference between the earliest age
at which it is physiologically desirable that a woman should marry and
that at which the ablest, or at least the most cultured, women usually
do. Acceleration in the time of marriage, often amounting to seven
years, as from twenty-eight or twenty-nine to twenty-one or twenty-two,
under influences such as those mentioned above, is by no means
improbable. What would be its effect on productivity? It might be
expected to act in two ways:--
"(1) By shortening each generation by an amount equally proportionate to
the diminution in age at which marriage occurs. Suppose the span of each
generation to be shortened by one-sixth, so that six take the place of
five, and that the productivity of each marriage is unaltered, it
follows that one-sixth more children will be brought into the world
during the same time, which is roughly equivalent to increasing the
productivity of an unshortened generation by that amount.
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