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extinct, the whole reasoning is wrong.
To that I reply that the argument is not mine; I did not invent it. That
it is incumbent on mankind so to strive, and that celibacy is preferable
to marriage, are truths revealed by Christ 1,900 years ago, set forth in
our catechisms, and professed by us as followers of Christ.
Chastity and celibacy, it is urged, cannot constitute the ideal of
humanity, because chastity would annihilate the race which strove
to realize it, and humanity cannot set up as its ideal its own
annihilation. It may be pointed out in reply that only that is a true
ideal, which, being unattainable, admits of infinite gradation in
degrees of proximity. Such is the Christian ideal of the founding of
God's kingdom, the union of all living creatures by the bonds of love.
The conception of its attainment is incompatible with the conception
of the movement of life. What kind of life could subsist if all
living creatures were joined together by the bonds of love? None. Our
conception of life is inseparably bound up with the conception of a
continual striving after an unattainable ideal.
But even if we suppose the Christian ideal of perfect chastity realized,
what then? We should merely find ourselves face to face on the one hand
with the familiar teaching of religion, one of whose dogmas is that the
world will have an end; and on the other of so-called science, which
informs us that the sun is gradually losing its heat, the result of
which will in time be the extinction of the human race.
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