We have still to examine the last two headings, laziness and alcoholism. As the figures given above show, these form a very small part of the causes: together only 1.59%. [290] Among the causes which have brought these persons to the point where they are, there are social factors also. Later on I shall speak of the relation between the present economic system and alcoholism. But at this point we may say as regards the 0.71% of persons who do not wish to work that a part of them—it is impossible to say just how many—have grown up in a bad environment, where they have never been given the habit of working regularly and diligently, so that they have become totally incapable of doing so. There is still another social factor that may be named; the disagreeable character of many kinds of work, made worse by long hours and low wages. To adduce but one example: the miner is obliged to work in a vitiated atmosphere, often in a painful position, and constantly surrounded by dangers, and this for very low wages. If we stop to think of this we are more astonished at the millions of workers who pass their lives under similar conditions, than at the comparatively few who refuse to work. However, taking all this into account, it is certain that there are among the proletariat persons who are predisposed to idleness by their congenital constitution. It is indubitable that these persons are invalids, who would be cared for in a well-organized society, but in ours are abandoned to their fate. Professor Benedikt says, in speaking of physical neurasthenia: “It represents not so much absolute weakness as speedy exhaustion coupled with a painful feeling of weakness. We make in our childhood more muscular movements than is necessary, and out of the pleasurable feeling which comes from these develop the first elements of pleasure in work. If, however, the child quickly becomes weary, and the muscular action soon begets a lively feeling of discomfort, there arises from this discomfort laziness or physical neurasthenia.” [291] The number of those the cause of whose poverty is to be found in themselves is not, then, very considerable. Nevertheless it is a little greater than the statistics given would lead one to suppose, for there are also certain of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, ruined in consequence of the lack of the qualities required for success, who have gone down little by little and have finally become incorporated with the lower proletariat.