“Be fruitful,” meant to Malthus reproduce your kind,—­that implied not only bringing babies into the world, but rearing them up to healthy, robust, and prosperous manhood, with every prospect of continuing the process.

“Multiply and replenish the earth” as a command to Noah, meant in the mind of the Rector of Harleybury, “People the earth with men after your own image.”

Very little care would be required in Noah’s time, with his fine alluvial flats, and sparse population, but in Malthus’s time the command could not be fully carried out without labour, self-development, and “moral restraint.”

The physiological law is simple and blind, taking no cognisance of the consequences, or the quality of the offspring produced.  The divine command is complex.  It embodies the reproductive instinct, but restrains and guides it in view of ultimate consequences.

So much for the views and teaching of Malthus.  To him no ethical standard was violated in preventing offspring by protracted continence, or lifelong celibacy, provided the motive was the inability so to provide for a family as to require no aid from the state.  And it is difficult to escape this conclusion.  There is no ethical, Christian, or social law, that directs a man or woman to procreate their kind if they cannot, or have reasonable grounds to think they cannot, support their offspring without aid from others.

There can be, therefore, no just law that decrees that men or women shall marry under such circumstances.  In fact most philanthropists think they violate a social and ethical law if they do marry.

But, if with Paul, they resolve that it is better to marry than to burn, is there any law that can or should prevent them selecting the occasions of their union, with a view to limiting fertility.

Abstention is the voluntary hindrance of a desire, when that desire is strongest in both sexes; and as such it limits happiness, and is in consequence an evil per se.  A motive that will control this desire must be a strong one; such a motive is not necessarily bad.  It may be good or evil.

There can be no essential ethical difference between constant continence, prior to marriage, and intermittent continence subsequent to marriage, both practices having a similar motive.

If post nuptial restraint with a view to limiting offspring is wrong, restraint from marriage with the same motive is wrong.

If delayed marriage in the interest of the individual and the State is right, marriage with intermittent restraint is in the same interest, and can as easily be defended.

The ethics of prevention by restraint must be judged by its consequences.  If unrestrained procreation will place children in a home where the food and comfort are adequate to their healthful support and development, then procreation is good,—­good for the individual, society, and the State.

If the conditions necessary to this healthful support and development, can by individual or State effort be provided for all children born, it is the duty of the individual and of the State to make that effort.