Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/59

Rh current opinion that more children are born in the night than in the day; in fact, there are about five night born against four day born, the maximum being about midnight, the minimum a little before noon (i., p. 208). Why this is, no one yet knows; it is a case of unexplained law. But another not less curious law relating to births seems to have been at last successfully unravelled. In Europe about 106 boys are born to every 100 girls. The explanation appears to depend on the husband being older than the wife; which difference again is regulated by prudential considerations, a man not marrying till he can maintain a wife. In connection with this argument, it must be noticed that illegitimate births show a much less excess of male children (p. 168). Here, then (if this explanation may be accepted), it appears that a law, which has been supposed to be due to purely physiological causes, is traceable to an ultimate origin in political economy.

The examples brought forward by Quetelet, which thus show the intimate relation between biological and ethical phenomena, should be pondered by all who take an interest in that great movement of our time the—introduction of scientific evidence into problems over which theologians and moralists have long claimed exclusive jurisdiction. This scientific invasion consists mainly in application of exact evidence in place of inexact evidence, and of proof in place of sentiment and authority. Already the result of the introduction of statistics into inquiries of this kind appears in new adjustments of the frontier line between right and wrong, as measured under our modern social conditions. Take, for instance, the case of foundling hospitals, which provide a "tour," or other means, for the secret reception of infants abandoned by their parents. It has seemed, and still seems, to many estimable persons, an act of benevolence to found and maintain such institutions. But, when their operation comes to be studied by statisticians, they are found to produce an enormous increase in the number of exposed illegitimate children ("Phys. Soc," i., p. 84). In fact, thus to facilitate the safe and secret abandonment of children is to set a powerful engine at work to demoralize society. Here, then, a particular class of charitable actions has been removed, by the statistical study of its effects, from the category of virtuous into that of vicious actions. An even more important transition of the same kind is taking place in the estimation of alms giving from the ethical point of view. Until modern ages, through all the countries of higher civilization, men have been urged by their teachers of morality to give to the poor, worthy or unworthy; the state of public opinion being well exemplified by the narrowing of the word "charity" from its original sense to denote the distribution of doles. Yet, when the statistics of pauperism were collected and studied, it was shown that indiscriminate alms giving is an action rather evil than good, its tendency being not only to maintain, but actually to produce, idle and miserable