Emerson has said that “the ingenuity of man has always been dedicated to the solution of one problem—how to detach the sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the sensual bright from the moral sweet, the moral deep, the moral fair—that is again to contrive to cut clean off this upper surface so thin as to leave it bottomless to get a one end without an other end. The soul says eat, the body would feast. The soul says, ‘The man and woman shall be one flesh and one soul.’ The body would join the flesh only.” “All things are double, one against another,” continued Emerson. “Tit for tat. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, blood for blood, measure for measure, love for love. Give it and it shall be given you. He that watereth shall be watered himself. What will you have, quoth God, pay for it and take it. Nothing ventured, nothing have. Thou shalt be paid exactly for what thou hast done, no more, no less. Who doth not work, doth not eat. Harm watch, harm catch. Curses always recoil on the head of him who imprecates them. If you chain a slave, one end chains you. Bad counsel confounds the adviser. The devil is an ass.” You must pay at last your own debt. Those are the laws. Now we recognize it in physics. Energy cannot be annihilated. Birth control says “yes” you shall pay the price. You can annihilate that energy and drink from the cup of pleasure, but you don’t take the responsibility—the duty and the care. You recognize it in physics. You recognize it in chemistry, in every law of life. When Ponzi in Boston said, “I will give you 50 percent”—the world laughed because it can’t be done. Birth control advocates like the Ponzis say they will give you 50 percent and 100 percent on your investment, but it can’t be done. It is frenzied finance. It is along the lines of the people who are alchemists, who think they can turn the baser metals into gold. It is an age-long dream. It is a belief that has been held from the beginning of time. That thing cannot be done. That is the law of life—of God—that you have to pay. And so that is the thing you are confronted with. I don’t say that you don’t seem to gain, but for every gain you seem to grasp you have lost the life of it. He who does not work shall not eat. The trouble is that we are bound by the fetish of money, of gold, and lose sight. In other words we have eyes literally that see not, and ears that hear not. And that is the thing that we must consider. So I want you to have in mind, that by the very law of life, the very theory of science of our being, we have to pay, and if we take that, if we try to grasp that we are going to pay the penalty. In my next opportunity to address you I shall take up that to show you how we pay. (Applause.) Margaret Sanger FIRST SPEECH