Analogous tendencies are seen in certain animals. Among the bees the old workers appropriate the produce of the work of others. Certain ants practice a form of slavery, based, it is true on instinct, in stealing the pupæ of weaker species which, after hatching, become the servants of the idle robbers.
In incomplete animal societies, such as those of the ruminants, certain monkeys, etc., the old males, sometimes also the more courageous females (cows, for example) direct the herd and become recognized as chiefs by the others. But in these cases the personal property of objects or even living beings takes no part, because the animals have not yet learned its value.
Other animals living isolated show the first tendencies toward personal property; for example, the nest where they hoard their provisions, while others, such as the ants, bees, wasps, etc., have the sentiment of collective property well developed. For instance, a swarm of ants regards plants with grubs as its property, and defends them in consequence.
As soon as he has attained a primitive degree of culture, man comprehends that the possession, not only of land and the produce of work, but also the persons of other men, may profit him; and this leads to slavery. The male being the stronger soon combines the satisfaction of his sexual appetite with the advantage of property, by placing the woman more and more under his dependence and exploiting her. In this way woman becomes an object for sale and exchange, which will procure the purchaser, besides satisfaction for his sexual appetite, a docile slave and worker and a procreator of children, a source of other workers.
This motive, so clearly revealed by ethnography and history, sufficiently explains the ignoble traffic that man has made of love, or rather of sexual appetite. We have seen in Chapter VI the profit made by polygamous barbarians by the possession of many wives and children, which led more and more to the buying and selling of the latter. These customs are instinctively related to the traffic of slaves. Our modern civilization has happily abolished these taints, but money still influences our sexual life by measures which are hardly any better. The complication and refinement of civilized life have made women and children objects of luxury, and not a source of wealth as in former times. This is due to two causes. On the one hand, a wider and more humane conception of the social position of women and children has extended their rights. Man cannot now exploit them to the same extent as in the time of patriarchism, while the father of the family has, on the contrary, the duty of maintaining his wife and family, and of giving the latter a proper education. Among the poor, the exploitation of the wife and children still exists; but in the case of the rich and cultured the inverse phenomenon is produced. With the intention of making his family happy and distinguished, the father brings it up in luxury and idleness, and this produces a very harmful result. The increasing refinement of modern life and its pleasures leads to effeminacy. It bears upon the whole of society and degenerates into an artificial desire for brilliancy and show, which makes it increasingly difficult to obtain a simple and sober education for the family. Men and women, especially the latter, do their best to eclipse each other in their table, their toilet, the comfort and luxury of their apartments, their pleasures and distractions, their banquets and fêtes. An enormous mass of the produce of human labor is thus dissipated in futilities, for the benefit of unbridled frivolity and luxury. It is owing to this that a civilization which, thanks to science and progress, far surpasses all those which have preceded it in the richness of its means of production for the wants of humanity, not only shows more and more rich with superfluous wealth, but also more and more poor who vegetate from the want of it.
What is still more grave is that, for reasons of economy, the intelligent, educated and cultured marry less often and procreate fewer children. Again, our descendants degenerate more and more, owing to the consumption of alcohol or other narcotics, and the unhealthy life they lead. This degeneration is dissimulated by their well-nourished appearance, but is revealed in their increasing neuropathic tendency. They become accustomed to a number of artificial wants, which make them increasingly difficult to satisfy. This results in their exacting from society much more than they give to it by their work; whereas each ought to give to society more than he receives from it. As evil omens, I must mention the idleness of many women with regard to household and manual work. What are the effects of this state of things on the sexual life of modern society? They are of three kinds:
(1) Marriage for money; (2) prostitution, exploited by proxenetism, and between the two (3) venal concubinage.
MARRIAGE FOR MONEY
Marriage for money is the modern form or derivative of marriage by purchase. Formerly one bought a wife and sold a daughter; to-day one is sold to a wife and buys a son-in-law. The improvement consists in the fact that the buyer and the bought are no longer in the positions of proprietor and object possessed, respectively. Nevertheless, marriage at the present day gives rise to much traffic, speculation and exploitation of an evil nature.
These things are so well known that I need not dwell upon them. In place of love, force of character, capacity, harmony of sentiments, intellectual and bodily health, money is the alpha et omega of marriage. Money dazzles most men so that they are blind to everything else. They no longer understand that the health and the physical and moral worth of a woman constitute a capital which is far preferable to all the title-deeds deposited in the coffers of the future father-in-law, which are rapidly squandered by children tainted with bad physical or mental heredity. In this way ignorance of the laws of heredity and the rapacity of pecuniary interests perpetually tend toward the antisocial procreation of a degenerate posterity.