ABSTRACT
The most important characteristics of our age in the midst of society, of a number of individuals who, for one reason or another, have been unable to adapt themselves to the necessities of modern civilisation, and are unable to find a place therein. With the economic necessities which dominate the modern world, and competition, the law of production, things has suffered a profound change. To the class of outcasts produced by competition psychologists must add the hosts of degenerates of all kinds—alcoholic, tuberculous, &c.—who are preserved by modern medical science. It is precisely these individuals that form almost the only class that abandons itself without check to the most disturbing fecundity, confirming the law, that in the period societies perpetuate themselves by their lowest elements. The class of artificial outcasts is of quite modern formation. Its origin is psychological; it is the consequence of the modern ideas.
