140 REPRODUCTION 



one way or another you owe all your capacities and 

 powers to this wonderful thing we have been reading 

 about. If you are well and strong and normal, you have 

 blessings you cannot properly measure. 



We human beings have come pretty generally to feel 

 that all such blessings and powers carry with them some 

 obligations. We say of a young fellow who inherits from 

 his parents property and a good name, and then through 

 recklessness or incompetence squanders both, that he is a 

 spendthrift — ungrateful and degenerate. What shall we 

 say of boys and girls who are the "heirs of all the ages" 

 in these finer human capacities, and who so barter them 

 that they are not carried on to future generations? The 

 whole race is robbed. 



You then owe at least two things to society: (1) to give 

 your best qualities a chance, and (2) to try to see that 

 those who represent you in the next generation are the 

 best possible, and have the best possible chance. 



3. The Lower and Higher Qualities in Sex and Repro- 

 duction. In this discussion we have been trying to make 

 clear that everything about reproduction is natural and 

 with meaning. The divisions, the unions, the attractions, 

 the impulses and desires, the satisfactions, the unselfish 

 care given by parents, these are all a part of it, and are all 

 sound and natural. You should know about them, and 

 they must be kept natural. But all the natural things 

 about reproduction and sex are not equally important to 

 us as humans. The mental and spiritual and social 

 states which we have developed in connection with these 

 things are even more important to us than reproduction 

 itself. The worst thing that could happen to us is that we 

 should be like the lower animals in reproducing. We 

 humans have all the lower qualities that the animals have, 

 but we have developed the power of controlling and 

 guiding these impulses of ours in loftier ways. Mating 

 means to the lower animals certain instinctive desires and 



