"Eugenics," replied Boehm, "breeds superior children, but eugenic mating is a cold scientific thing which fails to fan the flame of man's ambition to do creative work. That is why we have the Level of Free Women and have not bred the virility out of the intellectual group. That is also the reason we have retained the Free Level on a competitive commercial basis, and have given the intellectual man the bank credit, a symbol of wealth, that he may use it, as men have always used wealth, for the purpose of increasing his importance in the eyes of woman. This function of wealth is psychically necessary to the creative impulse, for the power of sexual conquest and the stimulus to creative thought are but different expressions of the same instinct. Wealth, or its symbol, is a medium of translating the one into the other. For example, take your discovery; it is important to you and to the state. Your fellow scientists appreciate it, His Majesty appreciates it, but women cannot appreciate it. But give it a money value and women appreciate it immediately. They know that the unlimited bank credit will give you the power to keep as many women on your list as you choose, and this means that you can select freely those you wish. So the most attractive women will compete for your preferment. We bow before the Emperor, we salute the Statue of God, but we make out our checks to buy baubles for women, and it is that which keeps the wheels of progress turning." "So," I said, "this is your philosophy of wealth. I see, and yet I do not see. The legal limit a man may contribute to a woman is but twenty-four hundred marks a year, what then does he want with a million?" "But there is no legal limit," replied the Doctor, "to the number of women a man may have on his list. His relation to them may be the most casual, but the pursuit is stimulating to the creative imagination. But you forget, Herr von Armstadt, that with the compensation that was to be yours goes also the social privilege of the Royal Level. Evidently you have been so absorbed in your research that you had no time to think of the magnificent rewards for which you were working." "Then perhaps you will explain them to me." "With pleasure," said Dr. Boehm; "your social privilege on the Royal Level includes the right to marry and that means that you should have children for whom inheritance is permitted. How else did you suppose the ever-increasing numbers of the House of Hohenzollern should have maintained their wealth?" "The question has never occurred to me," I answered, "but if it had, I should have supposed that their expenses were provided by appropriations from the state treasury."