sex-life to within the limits necessary to provide against extinction is
but one (though the most amazing) of many vital economies effected by the
race. Every capacity for egoistic pleasure -- in the common meaning of the
word "egoistic" -- has been equally repressed through physiological
modification. No indulgence of any natural appetite is possible except to
that degree in which such indulgence can directly or indirectly benefit the
species;-- even the indispensable requirements of food and sleep being
satisfied only to the exact extent necessary for the maintenance of healthy
activity. The individual can exist, act, think, only for the communal good;
and the commune triumphantly refuses, in so far as cosmic law permits, to
let itself be ruled eitherby Love or Hunger.



Most of us have been brought up in the belief that without some kind of
religious creed -- some hope of future reward or fear of future punishment
-- no civilization could exist. We have been taught to think that in the
absence of laws based upon moral ideas, and in the absence of an effective
police to enforce such laws, nearly everybody would seek only his or her
personal advantage, to the disadvantage of everybody else. The strong would
then destroy the weak; pity and sympathy would disappear; and the whole
social fabric would fall to pieces... These teachings confess the existing
imperfection of human nature; and they contain obvious truth. But those who
first proclaimed that truth, thousands and thousands of years ago, never
imagined a form of social existence in which selfishness would be naturally
impossible. It remained for irreligious Nature to furnish us with proof
positive that there can exist a society in which the pleasure of active
beneficence makes needless the idea of duty,-- a society in which
instinctive morality can dispense with ethical codes of every sort,-- a
society of which every member is born so absolutely unselfish, and so