The Physiology of Marriage, Part 1 by Honoré de Balzac
page 28 of 149 (18%)
page 28 of 149 (18%)
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and the most beautiful. His ministers therefore must necessarily have
discovered some method of obtaining the cream of the population. Unfortunately the Bible, which is so clear on all matrimonial questions, has omitted to give us a rule for matrimonial choice. Let us try to supply this gap in the work of the administration by calculating the sum of the female sex in France. Here we call the attention of all friends to public morality, and we appoint them judges of our method of procedure. We shall attempt to be particularly liberal in our estimations, particularly exact in our reasoning, in order that every one may accept the result of this analysis. The inhabitants of France are generally reckoned at thirty millions. Certain naturalists think that the number of women exceeds that of men; but as many statisticians are of the opposite opinion, we will make the most probable calculation by allowing fifteen millions for the women. We will begin by cutting down this sum by nine millions, which stands for those who seem to have some resemblance to women, but whom we are compelled to reject upon serious considerations. Let us explain: Naturalists consider man to be no more than a unique species of the order bimana, established by Dumeril in his _Analytic Zoology_, page 16; and Bory de Saint Vincent thinks that the ourang-outang ought to be included in the same order if we would make the species complete. |
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