often love and take care of their children, while
the young ladies of society generally try and get rid of their
illegitimate children, because they are much more compromised. Some
married women even do not hesitate to perform abortion when a child
inconveniences them.

We have only mentioned the fourth group of women with which we are
concerned, because of its mercantile nature. Every union in which a
human being gives love for money is unnatural. Venal love is not true
love, but an improper contract between man and woman, with the object
of satisfying the sexual appetite, without any regard to the higher
object intended by nature. It sometimes happens that similar
contracts are made in the inverse direction, when a nymphomaniacal
woman purchases a fine young man, under some pretext or other. Inverts
also pay boys to satisfy their perverted appetites.

However unsavory may be the contents of the present chapter, it was
necessary to write it in order to give a clear idea of the subject.
Under the pretense of virtue venal love has too long been covered with
a veil of hypocrisy. Prostitution, marriage for money and venal
concubinage are, each in its way, elements of corruption and decadence
which, combined with alcohol, gambling, speculation, the greed for
money and pleasure in general, threaten our modern culture with ruin.
Among these anomalies, the State organization of prostitution being
the most monstrous, it is necessary to begin with its suppression.

Among the ancients, the goddess Venus or Aphrodite was the symbol of
beauty and love. Although somewhat sly, she was fecund, full of desire
and charm, and embodied not only the natural aspirations of man, but
also his artistic ideal. Nowadays, she is dragged in the mire by two
false gods--Bacchus, who makes a gross and vulgar brute of her, and
Mammon, who transforms her into a venal prostitute--while a
hypocritical religious asceticism, endeavors in vain to confine her in
a strait-waistcoat. May the progress of science and culture find the
power to deliver her from the tyranny of her two infamous companions,
deified by human ignorance and bestiality. Then only will the goddess
of love appear in all her glory!

CHAPTER XI

THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT ON SEXUAL LIFE

However strong may be the hereditary sexual instincts which an
individual has inherited by phylogeny from his ancestors, and however
violent their internal outbreaks in his ontogeny, it is n