This uncritical conclusion was disposed of by the author of the phrase “the survival of the fittest”--appropriately enough--more than thirty years ago. If the reader will turn to Herbert Spencer's _Study of Sociology_ (a masterpiece which may be commended to the publishers for the purpose of indexing--twenty editions without an index are too many) he will find in Chapter V. a discussion of this question. It is an astonishing thing that though Spencer conclusively exposed it a generation ago, the childish fallacy is still apparently as flourishing as ever. He shows how the greater healthfulness of married life was supposed to be proved by Dr. Stark from comparison of the rates of mortality among the married and among the celibate. Then no less an authority than M. Bertillon went into the matter and contributed a paper called “The Influence of Marriage”--thus begging the question in its very title--to the Brussels Academy of Medicine. He showed that, from twenty-five to thirty years of age, several Continental countries being taken into the reckoning, “the mortality per thousand is 4 in married men, 10.4 in bachelors, and 22 in widows. This beneficial influence of marriage is manifested at all ages, being always more strongly marked in men than in women.” The absurdity of the apparent conclusion regarding widows is surely, as Spencer says, too obvious for discussion. But, for the rest, Spencer goes on to show that, in reality, “marriage and longevity are concomitant results of the same cause”--in other words, “that superior quality of organisation which conduces to long life also conduces to marriage. It is normally accompanied by a predominance of the instincts and emotions prompting marriage; there goes along with it that power[51] which can secure the means of making marriage practicable; and it increases the probability of success in courtship.” Spencer shows how “of men whose marriages depend upon getting the needful income,” those who will succeed are in general “the best, physically and mentally--the strong, the intellectually capable, the morally well-balanced.” He shows also how “women are attracted towards men of power--physical, emotional, intellectual; and obviously their freedom of choice leads them, in many cases, to refuse inferior samples of men; especially the malformed, the diseased, and those who are ill-developed, physically and mentally. So that, in so far as marriage is determined by female selection, the average result on men is that while the best easily get wives, a certain proportion of the worst are left without wives.”