peasants, the women and children are one of the principal sources
of wealth, because they work and have few needs. Among the middle
classes, on the contrary, the wife is a source of expense, as well as
the education of the children. For men, the length of intellectual and
professional education (and military service in many countries) cause
marriage to be postponed and celibacy is obligatory at the time when
the sexual appetite is most powerful. Thus, the more civilization
advances, the longer is marriage postponed. The refinement and the
multiplicity of pleasures also diminish the attractions of marriage.

Lastly, intellectual culture exalts the desire for the ideal, so that
men and women well suited to each other meet less frequently, as their
mutual adaptation becomes more complicated.

Nevertheless, I must repeat here what I have already said concerning
the way in which novelists present us with the extreme passions of
ill-balanced people and describe them as types, the normal man being
too prosaic to attract their readers. Rotten as it is with neurotic
degenerates, our modern society is certainly not wanting in
pathological models for the novelists, but it is nevertheless false to
always put these into prominence. The cultured man of well-balanced
mind, adapts himself to marriage on the whole very well, and is not
always so difficult to please. However, it must be recognized that
marriage becomes less easy if a too high ideal is expected from it.
With characteristic prudence, Westermark does not answer the question
whether marriage will progressively diminish in the future.

=The Cult of Virgins. Sanctity of the Celibate.=--Among many savages
the singular idea obtains that there is something impure in sexual
intercourse. The celibacy ordained by several religions originates
from ideas of this kind.

Many nations have worshiped virgins, for instance the vestal virgins
of the Romans. The mother of Buddha was declared to be holy and pure,
Buddha having been conceived supernaturally, according to the legend.
A Buddhist monk is forbidden to have sexual intercourse, even with
animals! Celibacy among certain priests exists also in China.

Among the Hebrews, the idea of the impurity of marriage had got a
footing, and this no doubt powerfully influenced Christianity. St.
Paul thus places celibacy higher than marriage, and this is how the
idea became established among the fathers of the Church that the
repression of all