quite out of reach, may be brought into camp by the assurance of
economic ease, and what is more, he may be kept in order after he
has been taken by the consciousness of his gain. Among
hardheaded and highly practical peoples, such as the Jews and the
French, the dot flourishes, and its effect is to promote intellectual
suppleness in the race, for the average child is thus not inevitably the
offspring of a woman and a noodle, as with us, but may be the
offspring of a woman and a man of reasonable intelligence. But
even in France, the very highest class of men tend to evade
marriage; they resist money almost as unanimously as their
Anglo-Saxon brethren resist sentimentality.


In America the dot is almost unknown, partly because
money-getting is easier to men than in Europe and is regarded as
less degrading, and partly because American men are more naive
than Frenchmen and are thus readily intrigued without actual
bribery. But the best of them nevertheless lean to celibacy, and
plans for overcoming their habit are frequently proposed and
discussed. One such plan involves a heavy tax on bachelors. The
defect in it lies in the fact that the average bachelor, for obvious
reasons, is relatively well to do, and would pay the tax rather than
marry. Moreover, the payment of it would help to salve his
conscience, which is now often made restive, I believe, by a maudlin
feeling that he is shirking his duty to the race, and so he would be
confirmed and supported in his determination to avoid the altar.
Still further, he would escape the social odium which now attaches
to his celibacy, for whatever a man pays for is regarded as his right.
As things stand, that odium is of definite potency, and undoubtedly
has its influence upon a certain number of men in the lower