fecundation was illegitimate, and a social danger.  In 1897, the Holy See also pronounced that the practice is unlawful ("Artificial Fecundation before the Inquisition,” British Medical Journal, March 5, 1898).  Apart, altogether, from this attitude of medicine, law, and Church, it would certainly seem that those who desire offspring would do well, as a rule, to adopt the natural method, which is also the best, or else to abandon to others the task of procreation, for which they are not adequately equipped.

When we have ascertained that two individuals both belong to sound and healthy stocks, and, further, that they are themselves both apt for procreation, it still remains to consider the conditions under which they may best effect procreation.[462] There arises, for instance, the question, often asked, What is the best age for procreation?

The considerations which weigh in answering this question are of two different orders, physiological, and social or moral.  That is to say, that it is necessary, on the one hand, that physical maturity should have been fully attained, and the sexual cells completely developed; while, on the other hand, it is necessary that the man shall have become able to support a family, and that both partners shall have received a training in life adequate to undertake the responsibilities and anxieties involved in the rearing of children.  While there have been variations at different times, it scarcely appears that, on the whole, the general opinion as to the best age for procreation has greatly varied in Europe during many centuries.  Hesiod indeed said that a woman should marry about fifteen and a man about thirty,[463] but obstetricians have usually concluded that, in the interests alike of the parents and their offspring, the procreative life should not begin in women before twenty and in men before twenty-five.[464] After thirty in women and after thirty-five or forty in men it seems probable that the best conditions for procreation begin to decline.[465] At the present time, in England and several other civilized countries, the tendency has been for the age of marriage to fall at an increasingly late age, on the average some years later than that usually fixed as the most favorable age for the commencement of the procreative life.  But, on the whole, the average seldom departs widely from the accepted standard, and there seems no good reason why we should desire to modify this general tendency.

At the same time, it by no means follows that wide variations, under special circumstances, may not only be permissible, but desirable.  The male is capable of procreating, in some cases, from about the age of thirteen until far beyond eighty, and at this advanced age, the offspring, even if not notable for great physical robustness, may possess high intellectual qualities.  (See e.g., Havelock Ellis, A Study of British Genius, pp. 120 et seq.) The range of the procreative