Men and women, especially the latter, do their best to eclipse each other in their table, their toilet, the comfort and luxury of their apartments, their pleasures and distractions, their banquets and _fêtes_. An enormous mass of the produce of human labor is thus dissipated in futilities, for the benefit of unbridled frivolity and luxury. It is owing to this that a civilization which, thanks to science and progress, far surpasses all those which have preceded it in the richness of its means of production for the wants of humanity, not only shows more and more rich with superfluous wealth, but also more and more poor who vegetate from the want of it. What is still more grave is that, for reasons of economy, the intelligent, educated and cultured marry less often and procreate fewer children. Again, our descendants degenerate more and more, owing to the consumption of alcohol or other narcotics, and the unhealthy life they lead. This degeneration is dissimulated by their well-nourished appearance, but is revealed in their increasing neuropathic tendency. They become accustomed to a number of artificial wants, which make them increasingly difficult to satisfy. This results in their exacting from society much more than they give to it by their work; whereas each ought to give to society more than he receives from it. As evil omens, I must mention the idleness of many women with regard to household and manual work. What are the effects of this state of things on the sexual life of modern society? They are of three kinds: (1) _Marriage for money_; (2) _prostitution_, exploited by proxenetism, and between the two (3) _venal concubinage_. MARRIAGE FOR MONEY Marriage for money is the modern form or derivative of marriage by purchase. Formerly one bought a wife and sold a daughter; to-day one is sold to a wife and buys a son-in-law. The improvement consists in the fact that the buyer and the bought are no longer in the positions of proprietor and object possessed, respectively. Nevertheless, marriage at the present day gives rise to much traffic, speculation and exploitation of an evil nature. These things are so well known that I need not dwell upon them. In place of love, force of character, capacity, harmony of sentiments, intellectual and bodily health, money is the _alpha et omega_ of marriage. Money dazzles most men so that they are blind to everything else. They no longer understand that the health and the physical and moral worth of a woman constitute a capital which is far preferable to all the title-deeds deposited in the coffers of the future father-in-law, which are rapidly squandered by children tainted with bad physical or mental heredity. In this way ignorance of the laws of heredity and the rapacity of pecuniary interests perpetually tend toward the antisocial procreation of a degenerate posterity.