m yet.

Our conclusion then is that, with regard to the quality of the children
of any given mother, we cannot say that she should marry at any
particular age, within limits, rather than another. On the other hand,
it is evident that if she be highly worthy of motherhood we shall desire
her to have a large family, and therefore must encourage her early
marriage, as the late Sir Francis Galton so long maintained.

_Physical Fitness for Marriage._--We must carefully distinguish between
the question we have just been discussing and that of the marriage age
from the mother's point of view. We shall find that the best age for
marriage, so far as this question is concerned, is neither puberty, on
the one hand, nor the average marriage age amongst civilized women, on
the other hand.

If things were as we should like them to be, there would be a harmony
between the occurrence of puberty and fitness for marriage. But there
can be no question that the goal of evolution, which is perfect
adaptation, has not yet been attained by mankind, and indeed reason can
be given to show that the goal recedes as we advance towards it. The
practice of lower races, amongst whom the girls often marry at puberty
or before it, is much less injurious to the individual and the race than
we might suppose; but the harmony between the maternal body and the
maternal function is much less imperfect in lower races of mankind than
it is among ourselves. Just as we find that, among the lower animals,
the phenomena of motherhood are simple, easy, and almost painless, so we
find that, though owing to the erect attitude, as much cannot be said
for human beings anywhere, yet these phenomena are far less severe among
the lower races of mankind than among ourselves. The reason is to be
found in the astonishing progressive increase in the size of the human
head in the higher races. The large size of the head in adult life is
foreshadowed in its size at birth, and this it is which constitutes the
_crux_ of motherhood among the higher races. It is undoubtedly true that
the maternal body, by a process of natural selection, has been evolved
in the direction of better correspondence with, and capacity for, that
enlarged head of which civilization is the product. But at the present
stage in evolution the great function of giving birth to a human being
of high race--more especially to a boy of such a race--is graver, more
prolonged, and more hazardous than the maternal