for that purpose by the low-minded and the young, does not make it obscene. The objection which has been urged, that the means suggested for the prevention of conception might be availed of by the unmarried and immoral for the purpose of enabling them safely to indulge in vice, is simply the application to this subject of the exploded delusion that knowledge is a dangerous thing.... The time is surely past when countenance can be given to the argument that a knowledge of any truth, either in physics or in the domain of thought, is to be stifled because its abuse might be dangerous to society. The guardianship of the eunuch and the seclusion of the harem were not necessary to build up the national character of English women for chastity; and it is an insult to them to argue that it is necessary to keep them in ignorance on sexual matters to maintain it. Ignorance is no more the mother of chastity than of true religion. Mr. Justice Windeyer then examined the contention that the prudential limitation of families is "a violation of natural laws and a frustration of nature's ends": The argument that nature intends every woman to conceive as often as is possible would, if carried to its logical conclusion, result in the Indian custom of marrying every female child upon reaching puberty in order that no opportunity of conception should be lost. In all other matters of breeding but the all-important one of the breeding of the human race, the aim of man is to defeat the effects of nature's laws of reproduction, and to limit the number and kind of animals produced to the amount required for the use of man. The forces of nature, blind and ruthless in their effect, we control and defeat in their operation by all the means that science places at our command. To protect churches and hospitals from the operation of nature's laws, we put up conductors to arrest the inexorable effects of lightning, which would remorselessly destroy what piety and humanity would protect. The course of nature is to kill a noble woman, a devoted wife and loving mother, if her pelvis is too small to admit the delivery of a child with an abnormally large head. The practice of civilised man, aided by science, is in such a case of parturition to destroy the infant and to save the mother. The interference with the course of nature is direct, the practice in no way natural; but enlightened public opinion in no way condemns it. But if the pelvis of a woman is so unusually small that she never can be delivered of a child but at the peril of her life, where is the immorality in the husband and wife resorting to any preventive checks that may preserve a life that is dear and perhaps valuable to the world? It is unreasoning prejudice alone that starts the objection that such prevention