We have mentioned marriage for money, which is the prostitution of the rich, and poverty, which is one of the causes of common prostitution, and we have seen how money influences sexual intercourse. We may now state the general principle that a mediocrity living in comfortable circumstances without immediate daily wants, under good hygienic conditions, but requiring a man to work for his living, constitutes the best condition both for a healthy sexual life and for health and happiness in general. This is the _aurea mediocritas_, or modest competence, the excellence of which was recognized by the ancients. The sexuality of the rich man degenerates by luxury, comfort, excess and idleness, and by the fact that he is already satiated in his youth. That of the poor man is no less degenerate, owing to bad food, unhealthy dwellings, neglected education, and by vicious example which at the opposite extreme, resembles in many points that of the rich man; the exploiter and the exploited meeting in the dens of vice. Such is the case with gambling hells, with dens for prostitution and sexual anomalies, where the poor blackmail the rich, while the latter in their capacity as social exploiters help to maintain poverty and prostitution. Money makes sexual intercourse unnatural; in place of letting coitus take its natural course, it makes it an object of amusement and pleasure, and also of speculation, and it debases the bodies of wretched girls by making them objects of commerce. Unfortunately, the increasing facility of obtaining money without working for it, due to civilization, not only corrupts the sexual life of the wealthy and the poverty stricken, but has the same effect on the middle classes. A healthy and normal sexual life must be associated with honest and arduous work. We have already remarked that the solution of the sexual question depends partly on the suppression of alcoholic drink. We may add that another side of the question depends on the extirpation of the greed for money. If human beings could work for the social welfare without private interest, sexual relations would soon take their natural course. But it must be admitted that it is difficult to find a practical solution for the problem of social economy. =Rank and Social Position.=--Class distinction and social position have always played a part in sexual life. This is especially the case where certain class customs and prejudices prescribe a special code for marriage. The consanguinity of the nobility and of royal families, who can only marry among themselves, has resulted in obvious degeneration. Originally there was the desire to preserve the purity of noble blood, and rules formulated with this object at first had some success; but in the long run the exclusiveness of such selection produces degeneration of the group which puts it into practice.