MEDIUM 229 



of pain and crime. My intention was only to try 

 to explain that the harmonious laws of evolution 

 cannot be complied with because the present social 

 environment is incompatible with them. 



Cities, as to-day constituted, answer the require- 

 ments of capitalist ascendancy, and are therefore 

 incompatible with the society of the future. Of 

 present-day cities the least than can be said 

 is that they are ugly, dirty, and foul-smelling. 

 As for their sanitary conditions, they are a veritable 

 disgrace, seething cauldrons of human flesh to say 

 nothing of the frightful mortality caused by infectious 

 diseases, such as tuberculosis and typhus. 



In order to realise the state of things set out in 

 another place (" Health and the General Laws of 

 Mechanics"), it is indispensable for future com- 

 munities to reconstruct their cities on sanitary 

 principles, in order that man may live in a perfect 

 state of health, and be for ever exempt from the 

 numerous diseases that torment him. Some have 

 already disappeared, as the black plague, leprosy, 

 small-pox, cholera, etc., and others are decreasing 

 as civilisation advances. 



Houses and lodgings suffer from the same defect, 

 and these are hard to eradicate, since they follow 

 the natural selfishness of private ownership. He 

 who owns a house or builds it, as a rule fixes the 



