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But from the beginning of accurate statistics
we know that the duration of life in any nation is a fair index of
its progress in civilization, Quetelet gives statistics, more or less
reliable, from every nation of Northern Europe, showing a gain of ten to
twenty-five per cent, during the last century. Where the tables are most
carefully prepared, the result is least equivocal. Thus, in Geneva,
where accurate registers have been kept for three hundred years, it
seems that from 1560 to 1600 the average lifetime of the citizens was
twenty-one years and two months; in the next century, twenty-five years
and nine months; in the century following, thirty-two years and nine
months; and in the year 1833, forty years and five months: thus nearly
doubling the average age of man in Geneva, within those three centuries
of social progress. In France, it is estimated, that, in spite of
revolutions and Napoleons, human life has been gaining at the rate
of two months a year for nearly a century.


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