only most irreligious, but it proves at the same time the cowardice of man and his incapacity to live an individual life. To any one who thinks thus, the earth can only mean the turmoil and press of those on it; death must seem less terrible to such a man than isolation. If the immortal, moral part of his personality were really vigorous, he would have courage to look this result in the face; he would not fear the death of the body, nor attempt to substitute the miserable certainty of the continuation of the race for his lack of faith in the eternal life of the soul. The rejection of sexuality is merely the death of the physical life, to put in its place the full development of the spiritual life.
Hence it follows that it cannot be a moral duty to provide for the continuance of the race. This common argument appears to me to be so extraordinarily false that I am almost ashamed to meet it. Yet at the risk of making myself ridiculous I must ask if any one ever consummated coitus to avoid the great danger of letting the human race die out, if he failed in his duty? And would it not follow that any man who prefers chastity would be open to the charge of immoral conduct? Every form of fecundity is loathsome, and no one who is honest with himself feels bound to provide for the continuity of the human race. And what we do not realise to be a duty, is not a duty.
On the contrary, it is immoral to procreate a human being for any secondary reason, to bring a being' into the limitations of humanity, the conditions made for him by his parentage; the fundamental reason why the possible freedom and spontaneity of a human being is limited is that he was begotten in such an immoral fashion. That the human race should persist is of no interest whatever to reason; he who would perpetuate humanity would perpetuate the problem and the guilt, the only problem and the only guilt. The only true goal is divinity and the union of humanity with the Godhead; that is the real choice between good and evil, between existence and negation. The moral sanction that has been invented for coitus, in supposing that there
