A Moral Necessity
I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen;
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And "Thou shalt not" writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore.
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.
—William Blake
Orthodox opposition to Birth Control is formulated in the official
protest of the National Council of Catholic Women against the
resolution passed by the New York State Federation of Women's Clubs
which favored the removal of all obstacles to the spread of
information regarding practical methods of Birth Control. The
Catholic statement completely embodies traditional opposition to Birth
Control. It affords a striking contrast by which we may clarify and
justify the ethical necessity for this new instrument of civilization
as the most effective basis for practical and scientific morality.
"The authorities at Rome have again and again declared that all
positive methods of this nature are immoral and forbidden," states
the National Council of Catholic Women. "There is no question of the
lawfulness of birth restriction through abstinence from the relations
which result in conception. The immorality of Birth Control as it is
practised and commonly understood, consists in the evils of the
particular method employed. These are all contrary to the moral law
because they are unnatural, being a perversion of a natural function.
Human faculties are used in such a way as to frustrate the natural end
for which these faculties were created. This is always intrinsically
wrong—as wrong as lying and blasphemy. No supposed beneficial
consequence can make good a practice which is, in itself, immoral....
"The evil results of the practice of Birth Control are numerous.
Attention will be called here to only three. The first is the
degradation of the marital relation itself, since the husband and wife
who indulge in any form of this practice come to have a lower idea of
married life. They cannot help coming to regard each other to a great
extent as mutual instruments of sensual gratification, rather than as
cooperators with the Creating in bringing children into the world.
This consideration may be subtle but it undoubtedly represents the
facts.
"In the second place, the deliberate restriction of the family
through these immoral practices deliberately weakens self-control and
the capacity for self-denial, and increases the love of ease and
luxury. The best indication of this is that the small family is much
more prevalent in the classes that are comfortable and well-to-do than
among those whose material advantages are moderate or small. The
theory of the advocates of Birth Control is that those parents who are
comfortably situated should have a large number of children (SIC!)
while the poor should restrict their offspring to a much smaller
number. This theory does not work, for the reason that each married
couple have their own idea of what constitutes unreasonable hardship
in the matter of bearing and rearing children. A large proportion of
the parents who are addicted to Birth Control practices are
sufficiently provided with worldly goods to be free from apprehension
on the economic side; nevertheless, they have small families because
they are disinclined to undertake the other burdens involved in
bringing up a more numerous family. A practice which tends to produce
such exaggerated notions of what constitutes hardship, which leads men
and women to cherish such a degree of ease, makes inevitably for
inefficiency, a decline in the capacity to endure and to achieve, and
for a general social decadence.
"Finally, Birth Control leads sooner or later to a decline in
population...." (The case of France is instanced.) But it is
essentially the moral question that alarms the Catholic women, for the
statement concludes: "The further effect of such proposed legislation
will inevitably be a lowering both of public and private morals. What
the fathers of this country termed indecent and forbade the mails to
carry, will, if such legislation is carried through, be legally
decent. The purveyors of sexual license and immorality will have the
opportunity to send almost anything they care to write through the
mails on the plea that it is sex information. Not only the married
but also the unmarried will be thus affected; the ideals of the young
contaminated and lowered. The morals of the entire nation will
suffer.
"The proper attitude of Catholics...is clear. They should watch and
oppose all attempts in state legislatures and in Congress to repeal
the laws which now prohibit the dissemination of information
concerning Birth Control. Such information will be spread only too
rapidly despite existing laws. To repeal these would greatly
accelerate this deplorable movement.[1]"
The Catholic position has been stated in an even more extreme form by
Archbishop Patrick J. Hayes of the archdiocese of New York. In a
"Christmas Pastoral" this dignitary even went to the extent of
declaring that "even though some little angels in the flesh, through
the physical or mental deformities of their parents, may appear to
human eyes hideous, misshapen, a blot on civilized society, we must
not lose sight of this Christian thought that under and within such
visible malformation, lives an immortal soul to be saved and glorified
for all eternity among the blessed in heaven."[2]
With the type of moral philosophy expressed in this utterance, we need
not argue. It is based upon traditional ideas that have had the
practical effect of making this world a vale of tears. Fortunately
such words carry no weight with those who can bring free and keen as
well as noble minds to the consideration of the matter. To them the
idealism of such an utterance appears crude and cruel. The menace to
civilization of such orthodoxy, if it be orthodoxy, lies in the fact
that its powerful exponents may be fore a time successful not merely
in influencing the conduct of their adherents but in checking freedom
of thought and discussion. To this, with all the vehemence of
emphasis at our command, we object. From what Archbishop Hayes
believes concerning the future blessedness in Heaven of the souls of
those who are born into this world as hideous and misshapen beings he
has a right to seek such consolation as may be obtained; but we who
are trying to better the conditions of this world believe that a
healthy, happy human race is more in keeping with the laws of God,
than disease, misery and poverty perpetuating itself generation after
generation. Furthermore, while conceding to Catholic or other
churchmen full freedom to preach their own doctrines, whether of
theology or morals, nevertheless when they attempt to carry these
ideas into legislative acts and force their opinions and codes upon
the non-Catholics, we consider such action an interference with the
principles of democracy and we have a right to protest.
Religious propaganda against Birth Control is crammed with
contradiction and fallacy. It refutes itself. Yet it brings the
opposing views into vivid contrast. In stating these differences we
should make clear that advocates of Birth Control are not seeking to
attack the Catholic church. We quarrel with that church, however,
when it seeks to assume authority over non-Catholics and to dub their
behavior immoral because they do not conform to the dictatorship of
Rome. The question of bearing and rearing children we hold is the
concern of the mother and the potential mother. If she delegates the
responsibility, the ethical education, to an external authority, that
is her affair. We object, however, to the State or the Church which
appoints itself as arbiter and dictator in this sphere and attempts to
force unwilling women into compulsory maternity.
When Catholics declare that "The authorities at Rome have again and
again declared that all positive methods of this nature are immoral
and forbidden," they do so upon the assumption that morality consists
in conforming to laws laid down and enforced by external authority, in
submission to decrees and dicta imposed from without. In this case,
they decide in a wholesale manner the conduct of millions, demanding
of them not the intelligent exercise of their own individual judgment
and discrimination, but unquestioning submission and conformity to
dogma. The Church thus takes the place of all-powerful parents, and
demands of its children merely that they should obey. In my belief
such a philosophy hampers the development of individual intelligence.
Morality then becomes a more or less successful attempt to conform to
a code, instead of an attempt to bring reason and intelligence to bear
upon the solution of each individual human problem.
But, we read on, Birth Control methods are not merely contrary to
"moral law," but forbidden because they are "unnatural," being
"the perversion of a natural function." This, of course, is the
weakest link in the whole chain. Yet "there is no question of the
lawfulness of birth restriction through abstinence"—as though
abstinence itself were not unnatural! For more than a thousand years
the Church was occupied with the problem of imposing abstinence on its
priesthood, its most educated and trained body of men, educated to
look upon asceticism as the finest ideal; it took one thousand years
to convince the Catholic priesthood that abstinence was "natural" or
practicable.[3] Nevertheless, there is still this talk of abstinence,
self-control, and self-denial, almost in the same breath with the
condemnation of Birth Control as "unnatural."
If it is our duty to act as "cooperators with the Creator" to bring
children into the world, it is difficult to say at what point our
behavior is "unnatural." If it is immoral and "unnatural" to
prevent an unwanted life from coming into existence, is it not immoral
and "unnatural" to remain unmarried from the age of puberty? Such
casuistry is unconvincing and feeble. We need only point out that
rational intelligence is also a "natural" function, and that it is
as imperative for us to use the faculties of judgment, criticism,
discrimination of choice, selection and control, all the faculties of
the intelligence, as it is to use those of reproduction. It is
certainly dangerous "to frustrate the natural ends for which these
faculties were created." This also, is always intrinsically wrong—
as wrong as lying and blasphemy—and infinitely more devastating.
Intelligence is as natural to us as any other faculty, and it is fatal
to moral development and growth to refuse to use it and to delegate to
others the solution of our individual problems. The evil will not be
that one's conduct is divergent from current and conventional moral
codes. There may be every outward evidence of conformity, but this
agreement may be arrived at, by the restriction and suppression of
subjective desires, and the more or less successful attempt at mere
conformity. Such "morality" would conceal an inner conflict. The
fruits of this conflict would be neurosis and hysteria on the one
hand; or concealed gratification of suppressed desires on the other,
with a resultant hypocrisy and cant. True morality cannot be based on
conformity. There must be no conflict between subjective desire and
outward behavior.
To object to these traditional and churchly ideas does not by any
means imply that the doctrine of Birth Control is anti-Christian. On
the contrary, it may be profoundly in accordance with the Sermon on
the Mount. One of the greatest living theologians and most
penetrating students of the problems of civilization is of this
opinion. In an address delivered before the Eugenics Education
Society of London,[4] William Ralph Inge, the Very Reverend Dean of
St. Paul's Cathedral, London, pointed out that the doctrine of Birth
Control was to be interpreted as of the very essence of Christianity.
"We should be ready to give up all our theories," he asserted, "if
science proved that we were on the wrong lines. And we can
understand, though we profoundly disagree with, those who oppose us on
the grounds of authority....We know where we are with a man who says,
`Birth Control is forbidden by God; we prefer poverty, unemployment,
war, the physical, intellectual and moral degeneration of the people,
and a high deathrate to any interference with the universal command to
be fruitful and multiply'; but we have no patience with those who say
that we can have unrestricted and unregulated propagation without
those consequences. It is a great part of our work to press home to
the public mind the alternative that lies before us. Either rational
selection must take the place of the natural selection which the
modern State will not allow to act, or we must go on deteriorating.
When we can convince the public of this, the opposition of organized
religion will soon collapse or become ineffective." Dean Inge
effectively answers those who have objected to the methods of Birth
Control as "immoral" and in contradiction and inimical to the
teachings of Christ. Incidentally he claims that those who are not
blinded by prejudices recognize that "Christianity aims at saving the
soul—the personality, the nature, of man, not his body or his
environment. According to Christianity, a man is saved, not by what
he has, or knows, or does, but by what he is. It treats all the
apparatus of life with a disdain as great as that of the biologist; so
long as a man is inwardly healthy, it cares very little whether he is
rich or poor, learned or simple, and even whether he is happy, or
unhappy. It attaches no importance to quantitative measurements of
any kind. The Christian does not gloat over favorable trade-statistics, nor congratulate himself on the disparity between the
number of births and deaths. For him...the test of the welfare of a
country is the quality of human beings whom it produces. Quality is
everything, quantity is nothing. And besides this, the Christian
conception of a kingdom of God upon the earth teaches us to turn our
eyes to the future, and to think of the welfare of posterity as a
thing which concerns us as much as that of our own generation. This
welfare, as conceived by Christianity, is of course something
different from external prosperity; it is to be the victory of
intrinsic worth and healthiness over all the false ideals and deep-seated diseases which at present spoil civilization."
"It is not political religion with which I am concerned," Dean Inge
explained, "but the convictions of really religious persons; and I do
not think that we need despair of converting them to our views."
Dean Inge believes Birth Control is an essential part of Eugenics, and
an essential part of Christian morality. On this point he asserts:
"We do wish to remind our orthodox and conservative friends that the
Sermon on the Mount contains some admirably clear and unmistakable
eugenic precepts. `Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of
thistles? A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit, neither can a
good tree bring forth evil fruit. Every tree which bringeth not forth
good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.' We wish to apply
these words not only to the actions of individuals, which spring from
their characters, but to the character of individuals, which spring
from their inherited qualities. This extension of the scope of the
maxim seems to me quite legitimate. Men do not gather grapes of
thorns. As our proverb says, you cannot make a silk purse out of a
sow's ear. If we believe this, and do not act upon it by trying to
move public opinion towards giving social reform, education and
religion a better material to work upon, we are sinning against the
light, and not doing our best to bring in the Kingdom of God upon
earth."
As long as sexual activity is regarded in a dualistic and
contradictory light,—in which it is revealed either as the instrument
by which men and women "cooperate with the Creator" to bring
children into the world, on the one hand; and on the other, as the
sinful instrument of self-gratification, lust and sensuality, there is
bound to be an endless conflict in human conduct, producing ever
increasing misery, pain and injustice. In crystallizing and codifying
this contradiction, the Church not only solidified its own power over
men but reduced women to the most abject and prostrate slavery. It
was essentially a morality that would not "work." The sex instinct
in the human race is too strong to be bound by the dictates of any
church. The church's failure, its century after century of failure, is
now evident on every side: for, having convinced men and women that
only in its baldly propagative phase is sexual expression legitimate,
the teachings of the Church have driven sex under-ground, into secret
channels, strengthened the conspiracy of silence, concentrated men's
thoughts upon the "lusts of the body," have sown, cultivated and
reaped a crop of bodily and mental diseases, and developed a society
congenitally and almost hopelessly unbalanced. How is any progress to
be made, how is any human expression or education possible when women
and men are taught to combat and resist their natural impulses and to
despise their bodily functions?
Humanity, we are glad to realize, is rapidly freeing itself from this
"morality" imposed upon it by its self-appointed and self-perpetuating masters. From a hundred different points the imposing
edifice of this "morality" has been and is being attacked. Sincere
and thoughtful defenders and exponents of the teachings of Christ now
acknowledge the falsity of the traditional codes and their malignant
influence upon the moral and physical well-being of humanity.
Ecclesiastical opposition to Birth Control on the part of certain
representatives of the Protestant churches, based usually on
quotations from the Bible, is equally invalid, and for the same
reason. The attitude of the more intelligent and enlightened clergy
has been well and succinctly expressed by Dean Inge, who, referring to
the ethics of Birth Control, writes: "THIS IS EMPHATICALLY A MATTER
IN WHICH EVERY MAN AND WOMAN MUST JUDGE FOR THEMSELVES, AND MUST
REFRAIN FROM JUDGING OTHERS." We must not neglect the important fact
that it is not merely in the practical results of such a decision, not
in the small number of children, not even in the healthier and better
cared for children, not in the possibility of elevating the living
conditions of the individual family, that the ethical value of Birth
Control alone lies. Precisely because the practice of Birth Control
does demand the exercise of decision, the making of choice, the use of
the reasoning powers, is it an instrument of moral education as well
as of hygienic and racial advance. It awakens the attention of
parents to their potential children. It forces upon the individual
consciousness the question of the standards of living. In a profound
manner it protects and reasserts the inalienable rights of the child-to-be.
Psychology and the outlook of modern life are stressing the growth of
independent responsibility and discrimination as the true basis of
ethics. The old traditional morality, with its train of vice,
disease, promiscuity and prostitution, is in reality dying out,
killing itself off because it is too irresponsible and too dangerous
to individual and social well-being. The transition from the old to
the new, like all fundamental changes, is fraught with many dangers.
But it is a revolution that cannot be stopped.
The smaller family, with its lower infant mortality rate, is, in more
definite and concrete manner than many actions outwardly deemed
"moral," the expression of moral judgment and responsibility. It is
the assertion of a standard of living, inspired by the wish to obtain
a fuller and more expressive life for the children than the parents
have enjoyed. If the morality or immorality of any course of conduct
is to be determined by the motives which inspire it, there is
evidently at the present day no higher morality than the intelligent
practice of Birth Control.
The immorality of many who practise Birth Control lies in not daring
to preach what they practise. What is the secret of the hypocrisy of
the well-to-do, who are willing to contribute generously to charities
and philanthropies, who spend thousands annually in the upkeep and
sustenance of the delinquent, the defective and the dependent; and yet
join the conspiracy of silence that prevents the poorer classes from
learning how to improve their conditions, and elevate their standards
of living? It is as though they were to cry: "We'll give you
anything except the thing you ask for—the means whereby you may
become responsible and self-reliant in your own lives."
The brunt of this injustice falls on women, because the old
traditional morality is the invention of men. "No religion, no
physical or moral code," wrote the clear-sighted George Drysdale,
"proposed by one sex for the other, can be really suitable. Each
must work out its laws for itself in every department of life." In
the moral code developed by the Church, women have been so degraded
that they have been habituated to look upon themselves through the
eyes of men. Very imperfectly have women developed their own self-consciousness, the realization of their tremendous and supreme
position in civilization. Women can develop this power only in one
way; by the exercise of responsibility, by the exercise of judgment,
reason or discrimination. They need ask for no "rights." They need
only assert power. Only by the exercise of self-guidance and
intelligent self-direction can that inalienable, supreme, pivotal
power be expressed. More than ever in history women need to realize
that nothing can ever come to us from another. Everything we attain
we must owe to ourselves. Our own spirit must vitalize it. Our own
heart must feel it. For we are not passive machines. We are not to
be lectured, guided and molded this way or that. We are alive and
intelligent, we women, no less than men, and we must awaken to the
essential realization that we are living beings, endowed with will,
choice, comprehension, and that every step in life must be taken at
our own initiative.
Moral and sexual balance in civilization will only be established by
the assertion and expression of power on the part of women. This power
will not be found in any futile seeking for economic independence or
in the aping of men in industrial and business pursuits, nor by
joining battle for the so-called "single standard." Woman's power
can only be expressed and make itself felt when she refuses the task
of bringing unwanted children into the world to be exploited in
industry and slaughtered in wars. When we refuse to produce
battalions of babies to be exploited; when we declare to the nation;
"Show us that the best possible chance in life is given to every
child now brought into the world, before you cry for more! At present
our children are a glut on the market. You hold infant life cheap.
Help us to make the world a fit place for children. When you have
done this, we will bear you children,—then we shall be true women."
The new morality will express this power and responsibility on the
part of women.
"With the realization of the moral responsibility of women," writes
Havelock Ellis, "the natural relations of life spring back to their
due biological adjustment. Motherhood is restored to its natural
sacredness. It becomes the concern of the woman herself, and not of
society nor any individual, to determine the conditions under which
the child shall be conceived...."
Moreover, woman shall further assert her power by refusing to remain
the passive instrument of sensual self-gratification on the part of
men. Birth Control, in philosophy and practice, is the destroyer of
that dualism of the old sexual code. It denies that the sole purpose
of sexual activity is procreation; it also denies that sex should be
reduced to the level of sensual lust, or that woman should permit
herself to be the instrument of its satisfaction. In increasing and
differentiating her love demands, woman must elevate sex into another
sphere, whereby it may subserve and enhance the possibility of
individual and human expression. Man will gain in this no less than
woman; for in the age-old enslavement of woman he has enslaved
himself; and in the liberation of womankind, all of humanity will
experience the joys of a new and fuller freedom.
On this great fundamental and pivotal point new light has been thrown
by Lord Bertrand Dawson, the physician of the King of England. In the
remarkable and epoch-making address at the Birmingham Church Congress
(referred to in my introduction), he spoke of the supreme morality of
the mutual and reciprocal joy in the most intimate relation between
man and woman. Without this reciprocity there can be no civilization
worthy of the name. Lord Dawson suggested that there should be added
to the clauses of marriage in the Prayer Book "the complete
realization of the love of this man and this woman one for another,"
and in support of his contention declared that sex love between
husband and wife—apart from parenthood—was something to prize and
cherish for its own sake. The Lambeth Conference, he remarked,
"envisaged a love invertebrate and joyless," whereas, in his view,
natural passion in wedlock was not a thing to be ashamed of or unduly
repressed. The pronouncement of the Church of England, as set forth
in Resolution 68 of the Lambeth Conference seems to imply condemnation
of sex love as such, and to imply sanction of sex love only as a means
to an end,—namely, procreation. The Lambeth Resolution stated:
"In opposition to the teaching which under the name of science and
religion encourages married people in the deliberate cultivation of
sexual union as an end in itself, we steadfastly uphold what must
always be regarded as the governing considerations of Christian
marriage. One is the primary purpose for which marriage exists—
namely, the continuation of the race through the gift and heritage of
children; the other is the paramount importance in married life of
deliberate and thoughtful self-control."
In answer to this point of view Lord Dawson asserted:
"Sex love has, apart from parenthood, a purport of its own. It is
something to prize and to cherish for its own sake. It is an
essential part of health and happiness in marriage. And now, if you
will allow me, I will carry this argument a step further. If sexual
union is a gift of God it is worth learning how to use it. Within its
own sphere it should be cultivated so as to bring physical
satisfaction to both, not merely to one....The real problems before us
are those of sex love and child love; and by sex love I mean that love
which involves intercourse or the desire for such. It is necessary to
my argument to emphasize that sex love is one of the dominating forces
of the world. Not only does history show the destinies of nations and
dynasties determined by its sway—but here in our every-day life we
see its influence, direct or indirect, forceful and ubiquitous beyond
aught else. Any statesmanlike view, therefore, will recognize that
here we have an instinct so fundamental, so imperious, that its
influence is a fact which has to be accepted; suppress it you cannot.
You may guide it into healthy channels, but an outlet it will have,
and if that outlet is inadequate and unduly obstructed irregular
channels will be forced....
"The attainment of mutual and reciprocal joy in their relations
constitutes a firm bond between two people, and makes for durability
of the marriage tie. Reciprocity in sex love is the physical
counterpart of sympathy. More marriages fail from inadequate and
clumsy sex love than from too much sex love. The lack of proper
understanding is in no small measure responsible for the unfulfilment
of connubial happiness, and every degree of discontent and unhappiness
may, from this cause, occur, leading to rupture of the marriage bond
itself. How often do medical men have to deal with these
difficulties, and how fortunate if such difficulties are disclosed
early enough in married life to be rectified. Otherwise how tragic
may be their consequences, and many a case in the Divorce Court has
thus had its origin. To the foregoing contentions, it might be
objected, you are encouraging passion. My reply would be, passion is
a worthy possession—most men, who are any good, are capable of
passion. You all enjoy ardent and passionate love in art and
literature. Why not give it a place in real life? Why some people
look askance at passion is because they are confusing it with
sensuality. Sex love without passion is a poor, lifeless thing.
Sensuality, on the other hand, is on a level with gluttony—a physical
excess—detached from sentiment, chivalry, or tenderness. It is just
as important to give sex love its place as to avoid its over-emphasis.
Its real and effective restraints are those imposed by a loving and
sympathetic companionship, by the privileges of parenthood, the
exacting claims of career and that civic sense which prompts men to do
social service. Now that the revision of the Prayer Book is receiving
consideration, I should like to suggest with great respect an addition
made to the objects of marriage in the Marriage Service, in these
terms, "The complete realization of the love of this man and this
woman, the one for the other."
Turning to the specific problem of Birth Control, Lord Dawson
declared, "that Birth Control is here to stay. It is an established
fact, and for good or evil has to be accepted. Although the extent of
its application can be and is being modified, no denunciations will
abolish it. Despite the influence and condemnations of the Church, it
has been practised in France for well over half a century, and in
Belgium and other Roman Catholic countries is extending. And if the
Roman Catholic Church, with its compact organization, its power of
authority, and its disciplines, cannot check this procedure, it is not
likely that Protestant Churches will be able to do so, for Protestant
religions depend for their strength on the conviction and esteem they
establish in the heads and hearts of their people. The reasons which
lead parents to limit their offspring are sometimes selfish, but more
often honorable and cogent."
A report of the Fabian Society[5] on the morality of Birth Control,
based upon a census conducted under the chairmanship of Sidney Webb,
concludes: "These facts—which we are bound to face whether we like
them or not—will appear in different lights to different people. In
some quarters it seems to be sufficient to dismiss them with moral
indignation, real or simulated. Such a judgment appears both
irrelevant and futile....If a course of conduct is habitually and
deliberately pursued by vast multitudes of otherwise well-conducted
people, forming probably a majority of the whole educated 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.
