I say the ideal of celibacy is an intellectual and moral disease; it is a violation of nature, and nature devotes all her energies to breaking it down, and she always succeeds. There never has been a celibate religious order, no matter how noble its origin and how strict its discipline, which has not sooner or later become a breeding place of loathsome unnatural vices. And sooner or later the ideal begins to weaken, and common sense to take its place, and so we read in history about popes who had sons, and we see about us priests who have "nieces" and attractive servant girls. Make the acquaintance of any police sergeant in any big city of America, and get him to chatting on friendly terms, and you will discover that it is a common experience for the police in their raids upon brothels to catch the representatives of celibate religious orders. As one old-timer in the "Tenderloin" of New York said to me, "Of course, we don't make any trouble for the good fathers." Nor was this merely because the old sergeant was an Irishman and a Catholic; it was because deep down in his heart he knew, as every man knows, that the craving of a man for the society and companionship of a woman is an overwhelming craving, which will break down every barrier that society may set against it. There is another form of celibacy which is not based upon religious ideas, but is economic in its origin, and purely selfish in its nature. It is unorganized and unreasoned, and is known as "bachelorhood"; it has as its complements the institutions of old maidenhood and of prostitution. Both forms of celibacy, the religious and the economic, are entirely incompatible with chastity, which is only possible where love is recognized and honored. Chastity is a preparation for love; and if you forbid love, whether by law, or by social convention, or by economic strangling, you at once make chastity a Utopian dream. You may preach it from your pulpits until you are black in the face; you may call out your Billy Sundays to rave, and dance, and go into convulsions; you may threaten hell-fire and brimstone until you throw whole audiences into spasms--but you will never make them chaste. On the contrary, strange and horrible as it may seem, those very excitements will turn into sexual excitements before your eyes! So subtle is our ancient mother nature, and so determined to have her own way!