Behind the phenomenon of female parasitism has always lain another and yet
larger social phenomenon; it has invariably been preceded, as we have seen,
by the subjugation of large bodies of other human creatures, either as
slaves, subject races, or classes; and as the result of the excessive
labours of those classes there has always been an accumulation of unearned
wealth in the hands of the dominant class or race. It has invariably been
by feeding on this wealth, the result of forced or ill-paid labour, that
the female of the dominant race or class has in the past lost her activity
and has come to exist purely through the passive performance of her sexual
functions. Without slaves or subject classes to perform the crude physical
labours of life and produce superfluous wealth, the parasitism of the
female would, in the past, have been an impossibility.

There is, therefore, a profound truth in that universal saw which states
that the decay of the great nations and civilisations of the past has
resulted from the enervation caused by excessive wealth and luxury; and
there is a further, and if possible more profound, truth underlying the
statement that their destruction has ultimately been the result of the
enervation of the entire race, male and female.

But when we come further to inquire how, exactly, this process of decay
took place, we shall find that the part which the parasitism of the female
has played has been fundamental. The mere use of any of the material
products of labour, which we term wealth, can never in itself produce that
decay, physical or mental, which precedes the downfall of great civilised
nations. The eating of salmon at ten shillings a pound can in itself no
more debilitate and corrupt the moral, intellectual, and physical
constitution of the man consuming it, than it could enervate his naked
forefathers who speared it in their rivers for food; the fact that an
individual wears a robe made from the filaments of a worm, can no more