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