of a real civilization, the task of freeing the spirit of mankind from
the bondage of ignorance, prejudice and mental passivity which is more
fettering now than ever in the history of humanity, will be facilitated
a thousand-fold. The great central problem, and one which must be taken
first is the abolition of the shame and fear of sex. We must teach
men the overwhelming power of this radiant force. We must make them
understand that uncontrolled, it is a cruel tyrant, but that controlled
and directed, it may be used to transmute and sublimate the everyday
world into a realm of beauty and joy. Through sex, mankind may attain
the great spiritual illumination which will transform the world,
which will light up the only path to an earthly paradise. So must we
necessarily and inevitably conceive of sex-expression. The instinct is
here. None of us can avoid it. It is in our power to make it a thing
of beauty and a joy forever: or to deny it, as have the ascetics of the
past, to revile this expression and then to pay the penalty, the bitter
penalty that Society to-day is paying in innumerable ways.

If I am criticized for the seeming "selfishness" of this conception it
will be through a misunderstanding. The individual is fulfiling his duty
to society as a whole by not self-sacrifice but by self-development. He
does his best for the world not by dying for it, not by increasing the
sum total of misery, disease and unhappiness, but by increasing his
own stature, by releasing a greater energy, by being active instead
of passive, creative instead of destructive. This is fundamentally the
greatest truth to be discovered by womankind at large. And until
women are awakened to their pivotal function in the creation of a new
civilization, that new era will remain an impossible and fantastic
dream. The new civilization can become a glorious reality only with the
awakening of woman's now dormant qualities of strength, courage, and
vigor. As a great thinker of the last century pointed out, not only
to her own health and happiness is the physical degeneracy of woman
destructive, but to our whole race. The physical and psychic power of
woman is more indispensable to the well-being and power of the human
race than that even of man, for the strength and happiness of the child
is more organically united with that of the mother.

Parallel with the awakening of woman's interest in her own fundamental
nature, in her realization that her greates