Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/508

504 are more apt to marry protestants; similarly in Prussia (population, 63.29 per cent, protestant and 35.14 per cent, catholic), the catholics have 27.07 per cent, of marriages with protestants as against only 13.78 per cent, of marriages of protestants with catholics. In Berlin, where the population consists of 84.18 per cent, protestants and only 9.98 per cent, catholics, there were in 1904 only 19.93 mixed marriages of protestants to catholics, as against 323.81 per cent, of catholics to protestants, while in Bavaria, having a majority of catholic population, 70.65 per cent., and only 28.32 per cent, of protestants, it is the protestants who have a higher proportion of mixed marriages, 37.03 per cent., as against only 14.45 per cent, among the catholics. The powerful influence of the majority and its tendency to absorb the minority are thus demonstrated. The immediate cause is, of course, to be sought in the fact that there is often some difficulty to find a suitable partner among the minority, and when one is found among the followers of a different creed, all religious scruples are laid aside.

Intermarriage between persons of different creeds is a recent phenomenon, only one hundred years ago it was quite rare. "In no respect has modern civilization acted more beneficently than as promoter of religious toleration," says Westermarck. "In our time difference of faith discourages sympathy to a much less extent than it did in former ages." "In Prussia the number of mixed marriages has quadrupled within the last fifty years, while the number of marriages in general has increased only 70 per cent, during that period. In Bavaria the increase has been more pronounced. During the first half of the nineteenth century they constituted less than three per cent, of the total number of marriages, while to-day one in ten marriages is contracted between persons of different faiths.

All these facts and figures emphasize that it was not any racial antipathy between the so-called Semite and Aryan which kept the Jews of former days from marrying with christians. There were practically no mixed marriages among persons of any religion during medieval days. The same prevails to-day in Russia, where mixed marriages are prohibited by law. With the progress of religious