d class of the nation, we must
assume that it does not conflict with their actual code of morality.
They may be intellectually mistaken, but they are not doing what they
feel to be wrong."
The moral justification and ethical necessity of Birth Control need not
be empirically based upon the mere approval of experience and custom.
Its morality is more profound. Birth Control is an ethical necessity
for humanity to-day because it places in our hands a new instrument of
self-expression and self-realization. It gives us control over one of
the primordial forces of nature, to which in the past the majority
of mankind have been enslaved, and by which it has been cheapened and
debased. It arouses us to the possibility of newer and greater freedom.
It develops the power, the responsibility and intelligence to use this
freedom in living a liberated and abundant life. It permits us to enjoy
this liberty without danger of infringing upon the similar liberty of
our fellow men, or of injuring and curtailing the freedom of the next
generation. It shows us that we need not seek in the amassing of worldly
wealth, not in the illusion of some extra-terrestrial Heaven or earthly
Utopia of a remote future the road to human development. The Kingdom of
Heaven is in a very definite sense within us. Not by leaving our body
and our fundamental humanity behind us, not by aiming to be anything but
what we are, shall we become ennobled or immortal. By knowing ourselves,
by expressing ourselves, by realizing ourselves more completely than
has ever before been possible, not only shall we attain the kingdom
ourselves but we shall hand on the torch of life undimmed to our
children and the children of our children.
(1) Quoted in the National Catholic Welfare Council
Bulletin: Vol. II, No. 5, p. 21 (January, 1921).
(2) Quoted in daily press, December 19, 1921.
(3) H. C. Lea: History of Sacerdotal Celibacy
(Philadelphia, 1967).
(4) Eugenics Review, January 1921.
(5) Fabian Tract No. 131.
CHAPTER X: Science the Ally
"There is but one hope. Ignorance, poverty, and vice
must stop populating the world. This cannot be done by
moral suasion. This cannot be done by talk or example.
This cannot be done by religion or by law, by priest
or by hangman. This cannot be done by force, physical
or moral. To accomplish this there is but one way.
Science must make w
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