erity.

Inversely, a number of capable and healthy men and women remain
celibate and sterile for want of money. Capital exploits them as
workers and prevents them from reproducing their race; or else their
own foresight induces them to avoid procreation.

A characteristic sign is observed in military circles, especially in
the German army where officers who are not well-to-do are forbidden to
marry a woman unless she has a certain income. The officer must bring
up his family in accordance with his position. This system, which it
is sought to justify by all kinds of reasons, shows how the worship of
the golden calf and class prejudices may degenerate our manners and
customs. Without fortune one cannot serve the country as an officer,
or marry, except by selling oneself to a rich woman. In other terms,
an officer cannot marry according to his own inclination unless he
possesses a certain fortune. No doubt there are officers who marry for
love; nevertheless, they are not only obliged to have a certain
fortune, but the woman they marry must have a certain social position
and have been well educated. The wife of an officer has to take part
in balls and official gatherings. She is forbidden to carry on openly
any business, and her parents must not even be shopkeepers! In a
German town, one of my relatives heard a rich mother say to her
daughter, who could not make up her mind to marry a gentleman who
proposed to her: "If you do not want him, let him go; we do not wish
to persuade you. We have plenty of money, and if you want to marry
later on we can easily buy you an officer!"

In the tyranny of class marriages, it is money which almost always
decides the question. Formerly birth and nobility were everything, and
it was these which brought power and fortune; nowadays money has
replaced them, and has monopolized universal power. If an energetic
and intelligent man revolts, by returning to modest and primitive
customs, if he dresses simply, performs manual labor, takes his meals
at the same table as his servants, etc., he is despised and is not
received into what is called good society.

It is only up to a certain point, and with the exercise of great
prudence, that any attempt can be made to react against the whirlwind
of our unbridled luxury, and it is in marriage that this becomes most
delicate and most difficult. A well-brought-up and well-educated man
with no money, who wishes to marry while he is a student, so as to