st mention again the barmaids whose business it is to attract
customers by exciting their sexual desire, at the same time exploiting
themselves by prostitution. These saloons are dens of iniquity in
which alcohol and prostitution are inextricably confounded. In Germany
they have become a veritable social plague.

Drink makes men and women not only gross and sensual, but also
negligent, imprudent and irreflective. The saloon takes men from their
homes, and drink directly diminishes the population. This is seen in
Russia by comparing the abstainers with the drinkers, the former being
much more fecund. The statistics of Doctor Bezzola show that a single
drinking bout may have a blastophthoric effect. From this and from
other causes result the deplorable consequences of coitus which takes
place during drunkenness.[7]

=Wealth and Poverty.=--While in former civilizations the rich man
regarded a multiplicity of wives and children as a condition or cause
of his wealth and also as its result, in our modern civilization the
number of children diminishes with the increase of prosperity.
Children have ceased to be as formerly a source of wealth; on the
contrary, they occasion much expense for their education. Again, the
higher the social position of woman the more she fears pregnancy. Her
life of ease makes her weaker and more delicate, so that she becomes
less fit for the procreation of children. This phenomenon is an
unhealthy product of culture and reaches a truly pathological degree
in America.

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 o