nhabitants of
the faubourgs, owing to their extreme poverty, itself a powerful factor
in the production of degeneration, had lapsed into a state closely akin
to that of their savage ancestors. The nobility were weak and
effeminate, the majority of them either sexual perverts or monsters of
sensuality and lechery.

The middle class, as ever the true conservators of society, seeing this
miserable state of affairs, attempted to remedy it. Not fully
understanding the danger of such a procedure, they allowed the
degenerate element to share in their deliberations. Their moderate and
sensible counsels were quickly overruled by their savage associates, who
brought about a Reign of Terror (with such psychical atavists as Marat,
Danton, and Robespierre at its head), the like of which the world had
never seen before, nor has ever experienced since.

I have demonstrated, in the three instances of history just cited, that
degeneration has invariably followed luxury, and that a social and
political cataclysm has been, invariably, the result of this
degeneration. That certain classes of the Old World, and of the New
World, also, are living in inordinate luxury; and that certain other
classes are, even now, struggling in the very depths of poverty, is a
well-known fact. That this state of affairs is rapidly increasing the
percentage of degenerates, such as sexual perverts, insane individuals,
and congenital criminals, is not generally known; yet it is a woeful
truth.

The factors in the production of degeneration are as multitudinous as
they are varied, and I can find space for only a few of them. The
artificiality of many peoples' lives, wherein night is turned into day,
is a prominent factor in the production of degeneration. Now, the long
continued influence of artificial light exerts a very deleterious effect
on the nervous system; hence it is not to be wondered at that so many
men and women of society are neurasthenic. Not only are those
individuals who, voluntarily and preferably, spend the greater portions
of their lives in artificial light, rendered nervously irritable, but
those, also, who are driven by force of circumstances to turn night
into day are likewise afflicted. Several years ago, I met a
distinguished editor at Waukesha, who was suffering greatly from nervous
exhaustion. He told me that he was so situated that he did all of his
work at night, often writing until three o'clock in the morning. I
advised him to qui