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whole sphere of imitation, we ought not to be surprised if Statistics, in its ignorance of their
beginnings, represents them by horizontal lines that show scarce a deviation. In view of this, there is
nothing astonishing in the fact that the proportion of the annual number of marriages to the total
population remains about constant (except in France, I may say, where there is a gradual diminution in
this proportion) or even in the fact that the influence of marriage upon crime or suicide is expressed
each year by pretty much the same figures. Here we are dealing with ancient institutions which have
passed into the blood of a people just like the natural factors of climate, seasons, temperament, sex,
and age, which influence the mass of human acts with such striking uniformity (which has been greatly
exaggerated, however, as it is much more circumscribed than is generally supposed) and with a
regularity that is also remarkable, in quite a different way, again, in connection with vital phenomena
like death and disease. . . .
. . . These curves are now relegated to the last page, but they tend to encroach upon the others, and,
perhaps, before long, at any rate, at some time in the future when people have been satiated with
declamation and polemic, just as very well read minds begin to be with literature, and when they will
read the papers merely for their multifarious statements of exact and ungarnished fact, they will usurp
the place of honour. The public journals, then, will become socially what our sense organs are
vitally. . . . The ideal newspaper of this kind would be one without political articles and full of
graphical curves and succinct editorials.