_(c) Abstention from Marriage._—Mr. Galton has pointed out with great force the injury worked by sacerdotal celibacy in the history of European civilisation. The commendation of the single life in man or woman as “the better part” has been by no means confined to certain sects of Christianity. Long before that religion started, this sacrifice was enjoined on the priests of Cybele, the virgins of Vesta, the Egyptian ministrants, and many other officials in Old World rites; while in the New World not only were there houses of “nuns” among the Quechuas of Peru and the Mayas of Yucatan, but the priests in those cults and even the “medicine men” of rude Northern tribes were frequently vowed to perpetual and absolute chastity. In the struggle of modern life, and also in the greater facility for the pursuit of pleasure, of self-culture or devotion to some cherished pursuit, the unmarried person has an advantage, and hence it is noted that marriage is either long delayed or wholly avoided. The division of a community along narrow social, financial, or religious lines greatly aids this isolation by narrowing the selection of partners for life. War, emigration, and the love of adventure prompt the males to desert remote and quiet localities, leaving the females in the majority and imbuing the males with a distaste for domestic pursuits. During the Crusades there were considerable areas in Europe where there was only one man left to seven women. Students of psychopathic conditions have pointed out another and apparently growing cause of indifference to marriage,—that sentiment called “homosexuality,” an inversion of the sexual instinct toward one’s own sex. This may be innocent in action and emotion, when it means merely the preference for friendship in the same gender and a congenital indifference to sexual feelings; or it may progress to any degree of monosexual devotion, such as classic tradition attributed to the characters of Sappho and Heliogabalus. Whatever the cause which leads to the presence of many old bachelors and spinsters in a community, it must be condemned by the anthropologist, because it is certain to bring about mental deterioration of the stock; and the higher the motive, the more exalted the reason offered for such abstention, the surer is the deterioration, because it means that the class capable of such superior motives will be extinguished in the community.