Note 30 — Chapter VII · THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE

See especially Mathorez, Histoire de la Formation de la Population Française, Vol. I, 1920, Les Étrangers en France. The fecundity of French families, even among the aristocracy, till towards the end of the eighteenth century, was fabulous; in the third quarter of the seventeenth century the average number of children was five in Paris. But the mortality was extremely high; under the age of sixteen, Mathorez estimates, it was 51 per cent., and infant mortality was terrible in all classes, small-pox being specially fatal. Then there were the various diseases termed plagues, with famine sometimes added, while war, emigration, and religious celibacy all counteracted the excessive fecundity, so that from the thirteenth century to the third quarter of the eighteenth the population seems to have been stationary, about twenty-two millions. Then the size of the family fell in Paris to 3.9 and in France generally to 4.3, while also there were fewer marriages. Therewith there was an increase of prosperity.