[92] Sir Rutherford Alcock says also, that in Japan it is very rare to see any other worshippers in the temples than women and children; the men are always extremely few in number and belong to the lower classes. At least five-sixths and often nine-tenths of the pilgrims who come to the temple of Juggernaut are women. Among the Sikhs the women are said to believe in more gods than the men. These examples, borrowed as they are from different races, and at different epochs, show sufficiently, in Spencer’s opinion, that, when we find an analogous state of things in Catholic countries, and even in some measure in England, we are not to attribute it solely to the education of women; the cause, he thinks, is deeper, lies in their nature. (See Spencer’s Study of Sociology.)
[93] Shame is usually regarded as constituting the essence of modesty, but shame can have been but one of the elements in its formation; such shame as actually exists is readily explicable as a sense of the uncleanness attaching, in especial in the case of the woman (of whom the Hebrews required a periodic purification), to certain animal functions. But modesty must have been developed also by the use of clothing and the growth of the habit of covering, first the loins and then more and more of the entire person; and indeed the development of modesty and of the habit of wearing clothes must each have been aided by the other. The habit of going covered gives rise very soon to shame at being seen uncovered. The little negresses whom Livingstone supplied with shifts became, in a few days, so accustomed to having the upper half of their bodies hidden that, when they were surprised in their chambers in the morning, they hastily covered their breasts.
[94] See the author’s Problèmes de l’esthétique contemporaine, livre ii.
[95] “Among the polemical works on Christianity I shall cite one which is perhaps somewhat old, but precious, in that it sums up with great impartiality the whole mass of secular objections, including a large number of modern objections to Christianity, the book of M. Patrice Larroque, entitled Examen critique des doctrines de la religion Chrétienne.”
[96] What economists have really established, and what MM. Maurice Block, Courcelles-Seneuil, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, Othenin d’Haussonville are right in maintaining, is that it is harmful to society to add to the non-working classes, to the number of feeble beings who are incapable of labour, to the number of beggars, and of non-combatants generally, whoever they may be. Well, poverty favours the birth of those who are dependent upon society, and the birth of those who are dependent upon society tends still further to increase poverty; that is the circle from which so many economists have believed that the precepts of Malthus offered them an issue. Unhappily, if there is one universal attribute of poverty, it is its fertility; for in all nations the poorest classes are those that have the greatest number of children. Malthus has never been listened to by the poorer classes, but precisely by those only who, from the point of view of a sagacious political economy, ought to be encouraged to leave as many children behind them as possible, because they alone would educate them well: that is to say, the economical peasantry and the prosperous middle class. Insomuch that a fertility of the poor is absolutely without remedy (except by way of charity or emigration); but it constitutes in the end a much less considerable evil than the infertility of a nation as a whole, and is an ultimate evil only because, in the last analysis, it results in a genuine unproductivity. Poverty, especially in the cities, rapidly kills out the most prolific races.
[97] M. Richet.
[98] Toubeau, La Répartition des impôts, t. ii.
[99] See M. Baudrillart, Les Populations rurales de la Bretagne.
[100] Dr. Lagneau, Remarques démographiques sur le célibat en France.
[101] Aristotle, Politica, ii. 6, 13.