The two factors (a) and (b) conspiring together soon force the couple asunder, if they are positive, brave, and intolerant of conventions and rules—hence, I believe, the high figures for the period in question.
Chart III. DIVORCES ACCORDING TO PROFESSIONS.
| Agriculture. | Mining. | Manufactures. | Navigation and Fishing. | Inland Transport. | Trade. | Domestic Service. | Professionally Employed. | Unspecified Occupations. | |
| 1908 | 26 | 17 | 168 | 14 | 42 | 345 | 13 | 298 | 87 |
| 1909 | 19 | 21 | 172 | 25 | 29 | 253 | 10 | 244 | 110 |
| 1910 | 22 | 11 | 118 | 18 | 38 | 344 | 12 | 267 | 78 |
| 1911 | 21 | 9 | 194 | 24 | 30 | 366 | 12 | 320 | 97 |
| 1912 | 24 | 17 | 211 | 38 | 21 | 347 | 24 | 389 | 87 |
| 1915[93] | 37 | 26 | 362 | 31 | 84 | 381 | 11 | 361 | 79 |
| 1916 | 28 | 24 | 310 | 43 | 60 | 397 | 27 | 444 | 1 |
| 1917 | 44 | 48 | 419 | 33 | 79 | 446 | 18 | 545 | 73 |
| 1918 | 61 | 95 | 744 | 63 | 204 | 591 | 34 | 826 | 79 |
| 1919 | 133 | 192 | 1,581 | 78 | 468 | 1,174 | 64 | 1,903 | 169 |
In Chart III we have the statistics for divorce, tabulated according to the occupations of the husbands. Now, according to the 1911 census, the figures given for the total number of males engaged in three out of the nine categories is as follows:—
| Professional callings | 367,578[94] |
| Agriculture | 1,140,515 |
| Mining | 1,039,083 |
If we compare these total figures[95] with the corresponding figures given for the divorces in each category, we see the enormously high percentage of divorces that occur in the professional classes, as compared with both the mining and agricultural industry, and although in accounting for this conspicuous difference we have to bear in mind the facilities, chiefly financial, for procuring divorce in the professional classes, we are nevertheless confronted by a disparity which requires some explanation.
When, however, we consider the greater prevalence of birth-control among the professionals, with the inevitable unconscious disaffection that it introduces among the wives of that class; when, also, we reflect upon the more artificial circumstances in which this class lives, and the higher and less natural demands that its spouses make upon each other; when, moreover, we remember the greater irascibility and nervousness, together with the usually lower passion, of all people engaged in the more intellectual pursuits of life, which make them more prone to chafe under the many vexations to which married life gives rise, and less likely to attain that physiological serenity which is the pre-requisite of all solid contentment, these statistics seem to confirm the conclusions at which we have arrived, and, on the whole, to support the analysis we have made both of the marriage tie itself, and of the factors that conspire to loosen it.
Having dealt with divorce in so far as it concerns positive couples, I have now to deal with it in its relation to the negative man and woman. My present task is, therefore, by far the more difficult of the two, seeing that the moment we leave the uniformity of natural law and the regularity of indomitable forces, we find ourselves in a maze of possibilities, which, while they defy enumeration owing to their extreme multiplicity, also elude all effort at classification because of the infinite combinations and permutations that low health and eccentricity are capable of producing.
It must be clear that the moment the driving force of healthy, normal passion ceases to be the motive actuating male and female, the vagaries of human conduct are no longer calculable. One knows what in certain circumstances a healthy passionate animal will do. It is impossible to foretell what an unhealthy or unpassionate one will do.[96]