The temporary celibacy imposed on soldiers 

 exercises a certainly deplorable influence on 

 the human race ; it is the young men with 

 the least good constitutions, who, relieved of 

 military service, marry the earliest, whilst the 

 most healthy individuals are constrained to 

 temporary sterility, and in the large towns 

 run the chances of syphilis, the effects of 

 which are unfortunately permanent. 



Marriage itself, corrupted as it is in our 

 present civilisation by economic interests, 

 exercises usually a sexual selection in the 

 wrong way. Women degenerate in healih t 

 but, possessing a large fortune, find a husband 

 more easily than the more robust women of 

 the people or the middle class without a 

 marriage portion, and these are condemned to 

 remain sterile in an enforced celibacy, or to 

 give themselves up to a prostitution more or 

 less gilded, j 



It is incontestable that economic conditio'ns 

 have an influence on all social relations. The 

 monopoly of wealth assures to its possessors 

 victory in the struggle for existence ; rich 

 persons, even when they' are less robust, have 

 a longer life than those who are ill fed ; the 

 labour by day and by night under cruel 

 conditions imposed on adult men, and the 

 still more disastrous work imposed on women 



Vadala, Darwinistno naturale e darwinisme sociale, 

 Turin, 1883. Bordier, La vie des societes, Paris, 1887. 

 Sergi, Le degenerazioni umane, Milan, 1889, p. 158. 

 Bebel, Woman in the Past, Present, and Future, London 

 1885. 



t Max Nordau, Conventional Lies of our Civilisation, 

 London, 1895. ' 



