It is always possible for the narrow-eyed fanatic to object to the employment of birth control, precisely as he might object to the use of clothes, as "unnatural." But, if we look more deeply into the matter, we see that even clothes are not truly unnatural. A vast number of creatures may be said to be born in clothes, clothes so naturally such that, when stripped from the animals they belong to, we are proud to wear them ourselves. Even our own ancestors were born in clothes, which they lost by the combined or separate action of natural selection, sexual selection, and the environment, which action, however, has not sufficed to abolish the desirability of clothes.[9] So that the impulse by which we make for ourselves clothes is merely a conscious and volitional form of an impulse which, in the absence of consciousness and will, had acted automatically. It is just the same with the control and limitation of reproductive activity. It is an attempt by open-eyed intelligence and foresight to attain those ends which Nature through untold generations has been painfully yet tirelessly struggling for. The deliberate co-operation of Man in the natural task of birth-control represents an identification of the human will with what we may, if we choose, regard as the divinely appointed law of the world. We can well believe that the great pioneers who, a century ago, acted in the spirit of this faith may have echoed the thought of Kepler when, on discovering his great planetary law, he exclaimed in rapture: "O God! I think Thy thoughts after Thee." As a matter of fact, however, it was in no such spirit of ecstasy that the pioneers of the movement for birth control acted. The Divine command is less likely to be heard in the whirlwind than in the still small voice. These great pioneers were thoughtful, cautious, hard-headed men, who spoke scarcely above a whisper, and were far too modest to realise that a great forward movement in natural evolution had in them begun to be manifested. Early man could not have taken this step because it is even doubtful whether he knew that the conjunction of the sexes had anything to do with the production of offspring, which he was inclined to attribute to magical causes. Later, although intelligence grew, the uncontrolled rule of the sexual impulse obtained so firm a grip on men that they laughed at the idea that it was possible to exercise forethought and prudence in this sphere; at the same time religion and superstition came into action to preserve the established tradition and to persuade people that it would be wicked to do anything different from what they had always done. But a saner feeling was awakening here and there, in various parts of the world. At last, under the stress of the devastation and misery caused by the reproductive relapse of the industrial era, this feeling, voiced by a few distinguished men, began to take shape in action.