wo
modes of human life, and in this I see the dawn of salvation in the
future. The modern towns of North America, thanks to the great
extension of their territory, already resemble the country to a great
extent, each house being surrounded by a garden. The electric tramways
shorten distances and facilitate this manner of building towns. As
means of communication become still more simplified and cheapened, the
advantages of country life will be joined to those of the town without
suffering from the promiscuity of the latter. The disadvantages of
country life consist in atrophy of the intellectual dispositions from
want of contact; improvement in means of transport will bring this
contact to the country. The result of such distribution of the
territory of a civilized state, such as I have in view, might be
called an _Agropolis_--an urbanized country or a countrified town. It
would then be possible to live a life more ideal in human sentiments,
and healthier as regards material and sexual matters.

The state of the countryman or peasant is advantageous for marriage,
not only because it does not offer such a suitable soil for
prostitution, but because the danger of venereal disease is
diminished, and the procreation of healthy offspring favors conjugal
happiness and constancy in sexual union. From the religious point of
view, the freedom in sexual intercourse which prevails among country
people before marriage is looked upon as immoral; but this is a
natural phenomenon similar to the "marriage by trial" of certain
savage races, or the "hand-fasting" of the Scotch people, of which we
have spoken in Chapter VI. People who tolerate and defend prostitution
should be ashamed of their hypocrisy and of the manner in which they
distort morality, when in the same breath they reproach peasants with
their natural but illegitimate unions.

It is needless to say that other causes of degeneration may exist in
the country as well as in towns; for instance, certain endemic
diseases, such as myxoedema and malaria, the brutish life of certain
tribes, perpetuation of degeneracy by consanguineous unions, etc.

The worst state is certainly that of the proletariat of large towns,
which is generally associated with crime. In the community of pimps,
criminals and decadents in general, is constituted a special social
outlook, which regards the greatest scamp in the light of a hero. When
a child shows a precocious criminal disposition it is looke