d since the Renaissance, more than half were either
celibates or lived apart from their wives. Even the married ones
revealed the tendency plainly. For example, consider Shakespeare. He
was forced into marriage while still a minor by the brothers of Ann
Hathaway, who was several years his senior, and had debauched him and
gave out that she was enceinte by him. He escaped from her abhorrent
embraces as quickly as possible, and thereafter kept as far away from
her as he could. His very distaste for marriage, indeed, was the cause
of his residence in London, and hence, in all probability, of the
labours which made him immortal.

In different parts of the world various expedients have been resorted to
to overcome this reluctance to marriage among the better sort of men.
Christianity, in general, combats it on the ground that it is offensive
to God--though at the same time leaning toward an enforced celibacy
among its own agents. The discrepancy is fatal to the position. On the
one hand, it is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted
His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin, and on
the other hand, it is obvious that the average cleric would be damaged
but little, and probably improved appreciably, by having a wife to
think for him, and to force him to virtue and industry, and to aid him
otherwise in his sordid profession. Where religious superstitions
have died out the institution of the dot prevails--an idea borrowed by
Christians from the Jews. The dot is simply a bribe designed to overcome
the disinclination of the male. It involves a frank recognition of the
fact that he loses by marriage, and it seeks to make up for that loss by
a money payment. Its obvious effect is to give young women a wider and
better choice of husbands. A relatively superior man, otherwise quite
out of reach, may be brought into camp by the assurance of economic
ease, and what is more, he may be kept in order after he has been taken
by the consciousness of his gain. Among hardheaded and highly practical
peoples, such as the Jews and the French, the dot flourishes, and
its effect is to promote intellectual suppleness in the race, for the
average child is thus not inevitably the offspring of a woman and a
noodle, as with us, but may be the offspring of a woman and a man of
reasonable intelligence. But even in France, the very highest class of
men tend to evade marriage; they resist money almost as unanimously as