n the lower stages of development, which sees in luscious
and abundant food an end worthy of man's best efforts. Now, this is not
right and should not be done. And, in order to avoid doing it, it is
only needful to realize the fact that whatever truly deserves to be held
up as a worthy object of man's striving and working, whether it be the
service of humanity, of one's country, of science, of art, not to speak
of the service of God, is far above and beyond the sphere of personal
enjoyment. Hence, it follows that not only to form a liaison, but
even to contract marriage, is, from a Christian point of view, not a
progress, but a fall. Love, and all the states that accompany and follow
it, however we may try in prose and verse to prove the contrary, never
do and never can facilitate the attainment of an aim worthy of men, but
always make it more difficult. This is my fifth contention.

How about the human race? If we admit that celibacy is better and nobler
than marriage, evidently the human race will come to an end. But, if the
logical conclusion of the argument is that the human race will become
extinct, the whole reasoning is wrong.

To that I reply that the argument is not mine; I did not invent it. That
it is incumbent on mankind so to strive, and that celibacy is preferable
to marriage, are truths revealed by Christ 1,900 years ago, set forth in
our catechisms, and professed by us as followers of Christ.

Chastity and celibacy, it is urged, cannot constitute the ideal of
humanity, because chastity would annihilate the race which strove
to realize it, and humanity cannot set up as its ideal its own
annihilation. It may be pointed out in reply that only that is a true
ideal, which, being unattainable, admits of infinite gradation in
degrees of proximity. Such is the Christian ideal of the founding of
God's kingdom, the union of all living creatures by the bonds of love.
The conception of its attainment is incompatible with the conception
of the movement of life. What kind of life could subsist if all
living creatures were joined together by the bonds of love? None. Our
conception of life is inseparably bound up with the conception of a
continual striving after an unattainable ideal.

But even if we suppose the Christian ideal of perfect chastity realized,
what then? We should merely find ourselves face to face on the one hand
with the familiar teaching of religion, one of whose dogmas is that the
world will have an