I have been occupied with indicating a situation which at present exists, and in pointing out an ideal one which lies ahead, but which is not as yet possible. This is valuable, but it leaves a gap in our thought which requires filling. The question now arises which is capable of formulation in the [298] following terms: Given the accuracy of my presentation of the present appalling conditions, given the possibility of an ultimate approximation to the presented ideal in a distant future, is it possible at this time to take steps which will eventually lead to the necessary adjustments in the department of sex? It most certainly is, and my answer takes the following form.

I should like here to remind you that the coming three generations (in which I include the present one of boys and girls) will bring into incarnation a group of people who will be well equipped to lead humanity out of the present impasse. This fact warrants remembrance, and is often forgotten. There are always those at every epoch in human history who are able to solve the problems which arise, and who are sent in for that very purpose. This sex problem, in the last analysis, is a temporary one, little as you may think it today, and it grows out of a basic mistake, - out of the prostitution of man's God-given faculties to selfish physical ends, instead of their consecration to divine purposes. Man has been swept and carried off his feet by his instinctual animal nature, and only a clear and clean mental understanding of the real nature of his problem will be strong enough to carry him forward into the New Age and into the world of [299] right motive and right action. Man has to learn and deeply grasp the fact that the main purpose of sex is not the satisfaction of the appetites, but the providing of physical bodies through which life may express itself. He has to understand the nature of the symbolism underlying the sexual relation, and by its means grasp the scope of the spiritual realities. The Law of Sex is the law of those relations whereby life and form are brought together in order that divine purpose may be seen. This is a fundamental law of creation, and it is true, whether one is dealing with the informing Life of a solar system, with the birth of an animal, or with the appearance of a plant from a seed. "Sex" is the word we use to cover the relation which exists between that energy we call "life" and the aggregate of force units through which that energy expresses itself and builds a form. It covers the activity which takes place when the pairs of opposites are brought together, and by means of which they become at-one and produce a third reality. That third reality or result bears witness to their relation, and another life in form is seen. You have always, therefore, relation, at-one-ment and birth. These three words deal with the true significance of sex.

But man has prostituted the truth, and the real significance has been lost. Sex now means the satisfaction of the male desire for sensuous pleasure, and the assuaging of a physical appetite through the prostitution of the feminine aspect to that desire and appetite. This relation leads to no result as intended, but to a momentary second of satisfaction, and all of it is confined to the animal nature and the physical plane. I am largely generalizing and would remind you that there are exceptions to all generalizations. I should also like to add that no one must here think that I hold the masculine aspect as responsible for our present problem when I say that man uses woman for his pleasure. How can I mean this, when I [300] know that every human being is cyclically either a man or a woman; that the men of today have been women and the women have been men in previous lives? There is no sex, as we understand it, where souls are concerned; it is only in the form life that sex exists. Only in the process of differentiation for the purposes of experimentation does the incarnating spiritual man occupy first a male body and then a feminine, thus rounding out the negative and positive aspects of the form life. All the race is equally guilty, and all must be equally active in the process of creating the correct conditions, and in bringing order out of the present chaos.

Why will this be so? Because when this law is admitted as a governing intellectual principle, all men will tread more carefully the path of life, and will proceed with greater caution to fulfil their family and group obligations. They will know full well that "whatsoever a man soweth, that will he also reap," and that he will reap it here and now, and not in some mystical and mythical heaven or hell; he will have to make his adjustments in the life of every day upon earth, which provides an adequate heaven and a more than adequate [301] hell. The spreading of this doctrine of rebirth, its scientific recognition and proving, is fast going forward, and during the next ten years it will be the subject of much attention.