stand-points--Protestant, Catholic, and other--and it is notable that
while not one identified himself with the Bishop's opinion, several
decisively opposed that opinion, as contrary to the best beliefs of both
ancient and modern times, as representing a low and not a high moral
standpoint, and as involving the notion that the whole sexual activity of
an individual should be reduced to perhaps two or three effective acts of
intercourse in a lifetime. Such a notion obviously cannot be carried into
general practice, putting aside the question as to whether it would be
desirable, and it may be added that it would have the further result of
shutting out from the life of love altogether all those persons who, for
whatever reason, feel that it is their duty to refrain from having
children at all. It is the attitude of a handful of Pharisees seeking to
thrust the bulk of mankind into Hell. All this confusion and evil comes of
the blindness which cannot know that, beyond the primary animal end of
propagation in marriage, there is a secondary but more exalted spiritual
end.

It is needless to insist how intimately that secondary end of marriage is
bound up with the practice of birth-control. Without birth-control,
indeed, it could frequently have no existence at all, and even at the
best seldom be free from disconcerting possibilities fatal to its very
essence. Against these disconcerting possibilities is often placed, on the
other side, the un-æsthetic nature of the contraceptives associated with
birth-control. Yet, it must be remembered, they are of a part with the
whole of our civilised human life. We at no point enter the spiritual save
through the material. Forel has in this connection compared the use of
contraceptives to the use of eye-glasses. Eye-glasses are equally
un-æsthetic, yet they are devices, based on Nature, wherewith to
supplement the deficiencies of Nature. However in themselves un-æsthetic,
for those who need them they make the æsthetic possible. Eye-glasses and