ecessary to
recognize that an organism so complicated as that of man is capable of
adapting itself to its environment to a remarkable and varied degree,
and that consequently external influences react strongly on the sexual
appetite. We will now examine these influences, so far as they are not
dealt with in other chapters.

=Influence of Climate.=--Warm climates appear to excite the intensity
of sexual life; man matures more quickly and is more disposed to
sexual excess. I am not aware of other influences that can be
attributed to climate. It is, moreover, possible that the direct
influence of heat has been confounded with the indirect action it
exerts in the conditions of human existence. In cold countries life is
more laborious, and this diminishes the intensity of the sexual
appetite. In warm countries man has not so much concern with
dwellings, clothes and heating; life is greatly simplified, and this
freedom from anxiety inclines him to greater sexual activity.

=Town and Country. Isolation. Sociability. Life in Factories.=--The
social relations of man exert a great influence on sexual life.
Hermits and those who live on isolated farms are interesting in this
respect. Solitude generally leads man to chronic melancholia and to
abnormal peculiarities, unless he has a library in his hermitage, when
he may live in the spirit of the intellectual sociability derived from
the study of books.

It is quite otherwise with one who has no intellectual occupation, or
one who has lived in solitude from infancy. In this case the hermit
becomes a kind of savage, without any intellectual development, and
reverts more or less to the state of primitive man.

An adult who establishes himself in solitude without providing himself
with intellectual capital becomes strongly inclined to depressing
psychoses. This is observed among the isolated farmers, according to
Professor Seguin, of New York. The man who lives alone, or surrounded
only by the members of his family becomes disposed to certain sexual
anomalies, such as incest, sodomy and masturbation.

It is among the agricultural population that we meet with the most
normal sexual relations and the best hygiene. The French Canadians
form a good example, and it is the same generally where agriculture is
practiced by independent peasants, not alcoholized, and having divided
property. Agricultural families generally procreate more children and
healthier ones than urban families. No d