se_. A motive that will control this desire
must be a strong one; such a motive is not necessarily bad. It may be
good or evil.

There can be no essential ethical difference between constant
continence, prior to marriage, and intermittent continence subsequent to
marriage, both practices having a similar motive.

If post nuptial restraint with a view to limiting offspring is wrong,
restraint from marriage with the same motive is wrong.

If delayed marriage in the interest of the individual and the State is
right, marriage with intermittent restraint is in the same interest, and
can as easily be defended.

The ethics of prevention by restraint must be judged by its
consequences. If unrestrained procreation will place children in a home
where the food and comfort are adequate to their healthful support and
development, then procreation is good,--good for the individual,
society, and the State.

If the conditions necessary to this healthful support and development,
can by individual or State effort be provided for all children born, it
is the duty of the individual and of the State to make that effort.

All persons of fair education and good intelligence know what those
conditions are, and if they procreate regardless of their absence, that
procreation is an evil, and prevention by restraint is the contrary
virtue.

It is not suggested, however, that all those who prevent, without or
within the marriage bond, do so from this worthy motive, nor is it
suggested that all those who prevent are not extravagant in their demand
for luxurious conditions for themselves and for their children.

Many require not merely the conditions necessary to the healthful
development of each and every child they may bear, but they demand that
child-bearing shall not entail hardships nor the prospect of hardships,
shall not involve the surrender of any comfort or luxury, nor the
prospect of any such surrender.

Whatever doubt may exist in the minds of moralists and philanthropists
as to the ethics of prevention in the face of poverty, there can be no
doubt that prevention by those able to bear and educate healthy
offspring, without hardship, is a pernicious vice degrading to the
individual, and a crime against society and the State.

Aristotle called this vice "oliganthropy." Amongst the ancients it was
associated with self-indulgence, luxury, and ease. It was the result of
self-indulgence, but it was the cause of mental and moral ana