IV. Since, according to Christ's teaching, our planet is "a vale of tears," and our earthly life is valueless and a mere preparation for a better life to come, it has succeeded in inducing men to sacrifice all happiness on this side of eternity and make light of all earthly goods. Among these "earthly goods," in the case of the modern civilized man, we must include the countless great and small conveniences of technical science, hygiene, commerce, etc., which have made modern life cheerful and comfortable; we must include all the gratifications of painting, sculpture, music, and poetry, which flourished exceedingly even during the Middle Ages (in spite of its principles), and which we esteem as "ideal pleasures"; we must include all that invaluable progress of science, especially the study of nature, of which the nineteenth century is justly proud. All these "earthly goods," that have so high a value in the eyes of the monist, are worthless--nay, injurious--for the most part, according to Christian teaching; the stern code of Christian morals should look just as unfavorably on the pursuit of these pleasures as our humanistic ethics fosters and encourages it. Once more, therefore, Christianity is found to be an enemy to civilization, and the struggle which modern thought and science are compelled to conduct with it is, in this additional sense, a "_cultur-kampf_." V. Another of the most deplorable aspects of Christian morality is its belittlement of the life of the family, of that natural living together with our next of kin which is just as necessary in the case of man as in the case of all the higher social animals. The family is justly regarded as the "foundation of society," and the healthy life of the family is a necessary condition of the prosperity of the State. Christ, however, was of a very different opinion: with his gaze ever directed to "the beyond," he thought as lightly of woman and the family as of all other goods of "this life." Of his infrequent contact with his parents and sisters the gospels have very little to say; but they are far from representing his relations with his mother to have been so tender and intimate as they are poetically depicted in so many thousands of pictures. He was not married himself. Sexual love, the first foundation of the family union, seems to have been regarded by Jesus as a necessary evil. His most enthusiastic apostle, Paul, went still farther in the same direction, declaring it to be better not to marry than to marry: "It is good for a man not to touch a woman." If humanity were to follow this excellent counsel, it would soon be rid of all earthly misery and suffering: it would be killed off by such a "radical cure" within half a century.