To respect physical nature is foolish; physical nature should be studied with a view to making it serve human ends as far as possible, but it remains ethically neither good nor bad. And where physical nature and human nature interact, as in the population question, there is no need to fold our hands in passive adoration and accept war, pestilence, and famine as the only possible means of dealing with excessive fertility. The divines say: it is wicked, in this matter, to apply science to the physical side of the problem; we must (they say) apply morals to the human side, and practise abstinence. Apart from the fact that every one, including the divines, knows that their advice will not be taken, why should it be wicked to solve the population question by adopting physical means for preventing conception? No answer is forthcoming except one based upon antiquated dogmas. And clearly the violence to nature advocated by the divines is at least as great as that involved in birth-control. The divines prefer a violence to human nature which, when successfully practised, involves unhappiness, envy, a tendency to persecution, often madness. I prefer a “violence” to physical nature which is of the same sort as that involved in the steam engine or even in the use of fire. This instance shows how ambiguous and uncertain is the application of the principle that we should follow “nature.” Nature, even human nature, will cease more and more to be an absolute datum; more and more it will become what scientific manipulation has made it. Science can, if it chooses, enable our grandchildren to live the good life, by giving them knowledge, self-control, and characters productive of harmony rather than strife. At present it is teaching our children to kill each other, because many men of science are willing to sacrifice the future of mankind to their own momentary prosperity. But this phase will pass when men have acquired the same domination over their own passions that they already have over the physical forces of the external world. Then at last we shall have won our freedom. * * * * * Transcriber’s Notes: ――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). ――Obvious spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected. ――Archaic and variable spelling and punctuation have been preserved. ――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.