INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY
79
Female
Male
Total
General Increase
Increase for Females
l836 30. .
?
?
178
100
?
184049
IQ5
47
242
138
100
1850-60
225
51
276
195
1 08
186170
?
?
263
149
p
1871-80
373
68
441
248
143
1881-90
"^i
107
658
370
227
1891
648
120
760
432
255
1892
673
122
795
447
257
1803
74
119
825
483
25 1 ;
1804 . .
693
146
839
471
310
i89<;. .
660
152
812
456
325
1896
668
14!
809
454
309
1807..
607
145
751
422
310
1898
677
150
823
462
324
1800
643
118
781
439
308
1900. .
658
128
786
447
272
18911900
613
136
778
449
293
INCREASE OF POPULATION IN BELGIUM.
1845-56 - - 192,364 4.44 per cent.
1856-66 298,273 6.50
1866-76 - 508,352 10.53
1876-80 183,824 3.44
1880-90 - 5493 ' 2 9-95
1890-1900 624,489 10.28
Thus in Belgium, while it has taken almost a century for the population to double, in the same time suicide has quintupled. The number of suicides of females tends to approach that of the males. Mental derangement then reaches the most con- servative element of the population, and woman is dragged into the machinery of social transformation. Quetelet has insisted especially on the regularity of suicides, and even of the methods of suicide, in regard to which he gives statistics from Dr. Casper for Berlin. This regularity, it is true, is fairly constant during certain limited periods and for certain countries. He recognizes this when he says : " However, society may be modified in a country, and so bring about changes in that which at first mani- fested a remarkable constancy for a limited period of time." But is there not proof here that the theory of averages can be applied to the conditions of civilization, that is to say, to social equi- librium, and is it not then capable of furnishing us with general and abstract social laws ?
