The first essential in the solution of any problem is the recognition and statement of the factors involved.  Now in this complex problem which to-day confronts us, no attempt has been made to state the primary facts.  The statesman believes they are all political.  Militarists believe they are all military and naval.  Economists, including under the term the various schools for Socialists, believe they are industrial and financial.  Churchmen look upon them as religious and ethical.  What is lacking is the recognition of that fundamental factor which reflects and coordinates these essential but incomplete phases of the problem,—­the factor of reproduction.  For in all problems affecting the welfare of a biological species, and particularly in all problems of human welfare, two fundamental forces work against each other.  There is hunger as the driving force of all our economic, industrial and commercial organizations; and there is the reproductive impulse in continual conflict with our economic, political settlements, race adjustments and the like.  Official moralists, statesmen, politicians, philanthropists and economists display an astounding disregard of this second disorganizing factor.  They treat the world of men as if it were purely a hunger world instead of a hunger-sex world.  Yet there is no phase of human society, no question of politics, economics, or industry that is not tied up in almost equal measure with the expression of both of these primordial impulses.  You cannot sweep back overpowering dynamic instincts by catchwords.  You can neglect and thwart sex only at your peril.  You cannot solve the problem of hunger and ignore the problem of sex.  They are bound up together.

While the gravest attention is paid to the problem of hunger and food, that of sex is neglected.  Politicians and scientists are ready and willing to speak of such things as a “high birth rate,” infant mortality, the dangers of immigration or over-population.  But with few exceptions they cannot bring themselves to speak of Birth Control.  Until they shall have broken through the traditional inhibitions concerning the discussion of sexual matters, until they recognize the force of the sexual instinct, and until they recognize Birth Control as the pivotal factor in the problem confronting the world to-day, our statesmen must continue to work in the dark.  Political palliatives will be mocked by actuality.  Economic nostrums are blown willy-nilly in the unending battle of human instincts.

A brief survey of the past three or four centuries of Western civilization suggests the urgent need of a new science to help humanity in the struggle with the vast problem of to-day’s disorder and danger.  That problem, as we envisage it, is fundamentally a sexual problem.  Ethical, political, and economic avenues of approach are insufficient.  We must create a new instrument, a new technique to make any adequate solution possible.