They look on marriage as irrational, and
regard modesty and chastity as vices. Shame is a weakness in their eyes,
and natural affections are irrational prejudices. Scruples against
lying, theft and murder, when any great good is to be gained by those
practices, are insanity. Gratitude, even to parents, is an absurdity.
Free indulgence, unlimited license, is a virtue. The curse of our race
is religion. The one great social evil is a surplus population; and the
prevention or destruction of children is the sum of social science and
virtue. The extinction of the weaker races, and the destruction of those
of every race who cannot contribute their share of wealth and pleasure
to the common stock, is the perfection of philosophy. In short, all the
old-fashioned principles of virtue, honor, conscience, generosity,
self-restraint, self-sacrifice, and natural affection are exploded, and
in their place there comes a black and hideous chaos of all indecencies
and immoralities, a boundless and bottomless abyss of all imaginable
and unspeakable horrors. I shudder when I think how near I came to this
hell of atheistical philosophy. My inability entirely to extinguish my
better instincts and affections, prevented me from plunging headlong
into its frightful depths.
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