With increasing civilization, the average age at marriage has continually advanced (in Western Europe the average age at marriage is for men twenty-eight to thirty-one years, and for women twenty-three to twenty-eight years), whilst the number of persons who do not marry until late in life, and of those who do not marry at all, is continually increasing. This is partly the result of spiritual differentiation and of the ever-increasing difficulty in finding a suitable life-partner, and partly it is the result of the increasing economic difficulty in providing for the support of a household. Schmoller has calculated that under normal conditions about 50 per cent.--one-half, that is to say--of the population of the country must be either married or widowed. In Europe, however, a much smaller proportion is in this condition. Thus, taking only persons over fifty years of age, in Hungary 3 per cent., in Germany 9 per cent., in England 10 per cent., in Austria 13 per cent., in Switzerland 17 per cent., were unmarried. The number of married and widowed persons among those over fifty years of age varies in the different countries between 56 per cent. (in Belgium) and 76 per cent. (in Hungary). In England, in the years 1886 to 1890, the number was 60 per cent., in Germany 61 per cent., in the United States 62 per cent., in France 64 per cent. If we enumerate the married only, excluding the widowed, we find 8 or 10 per cent. fewer. When we compare the number of married with the entire population, we find, instead of the above-mentioned 50 per cent., no more than 37 to 39 per cent. And this percentage appears likely to undergo a continual further decline. We must, at any rate, in the future reckon with this fact, although, of course, isolated oscillations in the marriage frequency may continue to occur. In these oscillations =economic= and =domestic= factors play a great part. It is, however, quite erroneous to regard our own time as one especially characterized by “=mercenary marriages=,” one in which the union between man and wife has become a simple affair of commerce. There are not wanting reformers who attribute to mammonism all the blame for the disordered love-life of the present day, and who describe very vividly and dramatically Amor’s dance round the golden calf. The facts of the history of civilization and folk-lore completely contradict the view that this mammonistic character of marriage is a product of our modern civilization. It is, on the contrary, a =vestige= of early primitive civilization, in which economic factors always had a far greater importance for marriage than spiritual sympathies. Thus, Heinrich Schurtz proves that among the majority of savage races marriage is rather an affair of business than of inclination. And where are money marriages more frequent than they are among our sturdy German peasants, with whom everything conventional has the freest possible play?[178]