Postponement of marriage must be classed as a mode of volitional control of population. The average age of marriage, both of men and women, is higher in the classes of greater wealth and ambition than in the poorer classes. The contrast in this regard between civilized and savage peoples is likewise noteworthy. The failure to marry, from whatever cause, is, in the social view of the question, volitional control. It is rare that the motive is directly and immediately the wish to avoid parenthood; now it is religious zeal, again it is disappointed sentiment; here it is conflicting duty, and there it is the individual selfish wish to retain an undivided income for one's own enjoyment. By countless strands of motive in the form of sentiments, social institutions, and interests, the primitive impulses of humanity are firmly bound; and in varying degrees, in different classes, the enormous possibilities of reproduction are controlled by human volition. § III. CURRENT ASPECT OF THE POPULATION PROBLEM [Sidenote: The many motives controlling population] 1. _Changes in population are resultants of many forces: those favoring a high birth-rate and low death-rate, and those limiting births or survival._ Whether the population on the whole shall grow, stand still, or diminish, depends upon the relative strength of contending forces making for life or death. But this control may lose its cruder aspect and may be waged in the realm of motive. More and more it is volition that controls in human society the growth of population; less and less it is the objective limit of the food-supply. Dire need resulting in ill-health and even in starvation, is still acting in some portions of society, but less to-day than ever before. The growth of population in this stage is not "fatalistic," as there is no inevitable tendency to increase or to decrease. It depends on the interaction of a number of forces, clearly distinguishable, by which population actually is kept far within the limits of food resources. Volitional control is not by a central and unified despotism determining human action, but it is by motives of the most complex sort, diffused throughout society and acting upon every member of it. [Sidenote: The standard of life in Asiatic countries]