d for the intimacy and stability of their union, is still more
emphatically set forth by the more advanced thinkers of to-day.

[11] It is well set forth by the Rev. H. Northcote in his excellent
book, _Christianity and Sex Problems_.

There is something pathetic in the spectacle of those among us who are
still only able to recognise the animal end of marriage, and who point to
the example of the lower animals--among whom the biological conditions are
entirely different--as worthy of our imitation. It has taken God--or
Nature, if we will--unknown millions of years of painful struggle to
evolve Man, and to raise the human species above that helpless bondage to
reproduction which marks the lower animals. But on these people it has all
been wasted. They are at the animal stage still. They have yet to learn
the A.B.C. of love. A representative of these people in the person of an
Anglican bishop, the Bishop of Southwark, appeared as a witness before the
National Birth-Rate Commission which, a few years ago, met in London to
investigate the decline of the birth-rate. He declared that procreation is
the sole legitimate object of marriage and that intercourse for any other
end was a degrading act of mere "self-gratification." This declaration
had the interesting result of evoking the comments of many members of the
Commission, formed of representative men and women with various
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 spir