lectual or spiritual order, it matters not,
for our nature is spiritual as truly as it is animal. The law of nature
forces no man into a state that is not in harmony with his sympathies
and affections.

Nevertheless, it must be admitted that to a certain extent the race
suffers numerically from an institution that fosters abstention from
marriage. To what extent, is an entirely different question. Not all
laymen marry. It is safe to say that the vast majority of religious
men, vow or no vow, would never wed; so that the vow is not really to
blame for their state, and the consequences thereof. As for women,
statistics show it to be impossible for all to marry since their number
exceeds that of men.

Now, marriage with the fair sex, is very often a matter of competition.
Talent, beauty, character, disposition and accomplishments play a very
active role in the acquisition of a husband. Considering that the
chances of those who seek refuge under the veil are not of the poorest,
since they are the fairest and best endowed of our daughters, it would
seem to follow that their act is a charity extended to their less
fortunate sisters who are thereby aided to success, instead of being
doomed to failure by the insufficiency of their own qualifications.

Be this as it may, what we most strenuously object to, is that vows be
held responsible for the sins of others. In some countries and sections
of countries, the population is almost stationary in marked contrast to
that of others. Looking for the cause for this unnatural phenomenon,
there are who see it in the spread of monasticism, with its vow of
chastity. They fail to remark that not numerous, but large families are
the best sign of vigor in a nation. Impurity, not chastity, is the
enemy of the race. Instead of warring against those whose lives are
pure, why not destroy that monster that is gnawing at the very vitals
of the race, sapping its strength at the very font of life, that modern
Moloch, to whom fashionable society offers sacrifice more abominable
than the hecatombs of Carthage. This iniquity, rampant wherever the
sense of God is absent, and none other, is the cause which some people
do not see because they have good reasons for not wanting to see. It is
very convenient to have someone handy to accuse of one's own faults. It
is too bad that the now almost extinct race of Puritans did not have a
few monks around to blame for the phenomenon of their failure to keep
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