Is it not obvious that there must be something vitally wrong with our institutions and conventions in matters of sex, when here exists this eternal war between our moralists and our artists? Why not make up our minds what we really believe; whether it is true that poets are, as Shelley said, "the unacknowledged legislators of mankind," or whether they are, as Plato declared, false teachers and seducers of the young. If they are the latter, let us have done with them, let us drive them from the state, together with lovers and all other impassioned persons. But if, on the other hand, it is truth the poets tell about life, then let us take the young god out of his dungeon, and bring him into our homes by the front door, and cast out the false gods of vanity and greed and worldly prestige which now sit in his place. CHAPTER XXXIX BIRTH CONTROL (Deals with the prevention of conception as one of the greatest of man's discoveries, releasing him from nature's enslavement, and placing the keys of life in his hands.) I assume that you have followed my argument, and are prepared to consider seriously whether it may be possible to establish love in marriage as the sex institution of civilized society. If you really wish to bring such an institution into existence, the first thing you have to do is to accomplish the social revolution; that is, you must wipe out class control of society, and prestige based upon money exploitation. But that is a vast change, and will take time, and meanwhile we have to live, and wish to live with as little misery as possible. So the practical question becomes this: Suppose that you, as an individual, wish to find as much happiness in love as may now be possible, what counsel have I to offer? If you are young, you wish this advice for yourself; while if you are mature, you wish it for your children. I will put my advice under four heads: First, marriage for love; second, birth control; third, early marriage; fourth, education for marriage.