It is many centuries since Europe adopted monogamic marriage as the legal type of the sexual union. That there exists by the side of regular marriage a considerable margin, in which are still found nearly all the other forms of sexual association, we do not deny; but in France, for example, two-thirds of the population live so entirely under the _régime_ of legal monogamy, that it would be evidently superfluous to describe it here; it is, in substance, the Roman marriage, the bonds of which Christianity has striven to lighten. In the general opinion, marriage such as our laws and customs require it to be, is the most perfect type possible of conjugal union; and this current appreciation has not been a little strengthened by a learned treatise, frequently quoted, and of which I cannot dispense with saying a few words. In 1859, a justly celebrated demographer, whom I have the honour to call friend, Dr. Adolphe Bertillon, published a monograph on marriage, which made a great sensation.[1111] This work, bristling with figures, scrupulously collected and strictly accurate, proves or seems to prove that the celibate third of the French population is, by reason of its celibacy, struck with decay, and plays the part of an inferior race by the side of the married two-thirds. In comparative tables, which are extremely clear, A. Bertillon follows step by step the different fates of the married and unmarried, and he shows us that at every age the celibate population is struck by a mortality nearly twice as great as the other; that its births merely make up 45 per cent. of its annual losses; that it counts every year twice as many cases of madness, twice as many suicides, twice as many attempts on property, and twice as many murders and acts of personal violence. Consequently, the State has to maintain for this celibate population twice as many prisons, twice as many asylums and hospitals, twice as many undertakers,[1112] etc. These revelations, absolutely true as raw results, caused a great commotion in the little public specially occupied with demography and sociology. Their alarm was soon calmed. From his interesting work A. Bertillon had drawn conclusions which were very doubtful, taking surely the effect for the cause, by attributing the inferiority of the celibate population solely to its celibacy. If this be so, we have only to marry these weak ones in order to raise them; but the superiority of the married population, which on the whole is indisputable, does not necessarily imply the superiority of the marriage state.