very idea
of Birth Control resurrected the spirit of the witch-hunters of Salem.
Could they have usurped the power, they would have burned us at the
stake. Lacking that power, they used the weapon of suppression, and
invoked medieval statutes to send us to jail. These tactics had an
effect the very opposite to that intended. They demonstrated the
vitality of the idea of Birth Control, and acted as counter-irritant on
the actively intelligent sections of the American community. Nor was the
interest aroused confined merely to America. The neo-Malthusian movement
in Great Britain with its history of undaunted bravery, came to our
support; and I had the comfort of knowing that the finest minds of
England did not hesitate a moment in the expression of their sympathy
and support.

In America, on the other hand, I found from the beginning until very
recently that the so-called intellectuals exhibited a curious and almost
inexplicable reticence in supporting Birth Control. They even hesitated
to voice any public protest against the campaign to crush us which was
inaugurated and sustained by the most reactionary and sinister forces in
American life. It was not inertia or any lack of interest on the part
of the masses that stood in our way. It was the indifference of the
intellectual leaders.

Writers, teachers, ministers, editors, who form a class dictating, if
not creating, public opinion, are, in this country, singularly inhibited
or unconscious of their true function in the community. One of their
first duties, it is certain, should be to champion the constitutional
right of free speech and free press, to welcome any idea that tends to
awaken the critical attention of the great American public. But those
who reveal themselves as fully cognizant of this public duty are in
the minority, and must possess more than average courage to survive the
enmity such an attitude provokes.

One of the chief aims of the present volume is to stimulate American
intellectuals to abandon the mental habits which prevent them from
seeing human nature as a whole, instead of as something that can be
pigeonholed into various compartments or classes. Birth Control affords
an approach to the study of humanity because it cuts through
the limitations of current methods. It is economic, biological,
psychological and spiritual in its aspects. It awakens the vision of
mankind moving and changing, of humanity growing and developing, coming
to fruition,