Religion and State. Religion is opposed to progress, to the development of the faculties, and to the general dissemination of knowledge that improves men and increases solidarity; and it incites to intolerance. Further, the confessional instruction is harmful to the intellectual faculties of children. The state puts obstacles in the way of the free movements of individuals; maintains civil marriage; prevents free discussion, one of the primary requirements for progress; it sets up compulsory education, but does not prevent the population’s being brought up in error; by drafting great armies, it withdraws the best forces from agriculture and manufacturing, so that the vigorous individuals marry late, and prostitution is thereby encouraged; it tolerates stock exchanges and lotteries; it favors crowding into great cities, something that is very favorable, directly and indirectly, to crime (bad housing conditions, alcoholism, etc.). In the chapter that follows, Professor Battaglia reduces the factors that he has just named “criminogenous”, to economic elements. “All the inconveniences, the anomalies, the errors, the disorders, found in the family, in the state, in social and religious relationships, etc., are provoked by the economic situation in which society finds itself....” [234] Civil Status. In the communistic villages of Russia it is advantageous for the father of a family to have many children, for the work in the common fields is then performed more easily. Hence the marriages of persons less than 20 years old are numerous. In the rest of Europe the situation is entirely different. By marrying, a man makes himself worse off, and at the birth of each child his cares increase. Hence marriages are put off (especially among professional men) when the man cannot provide for the needs of his family. For analogous reasons some deny their sexual desires and contract a marriage to better their position. In both cases economic conditions exercise an unfavorable influence. When his income is not sufficient to support himself and his family properly, the workman is obliged to labor longer than his strength permits; he and his family are not well enough fed, their dwelling is bad; consequently their physical condition deteriorates. The effects are not only diseases, like scrofula, pellagra, phthisis, anemia, etc., but also a great predisposition to contract them. Poverty undermines the organism and exhausts its strength.