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FRACMENTS OF A PRISONER'S DIARY
instrument of homicidal mania. Insanity becomes a crime. Individually, the ascetic is to be pitied for his or her depraved insanity ; the cult, however, is a veritable crime against humanity. The only saving grace is not the silly notion about its spiritualising power, but that it is a social disease as all crimes are when a particular social system is caught in such a severe crisis as overwhelms the multitude with utter despair, so that suicidal mania finds a fertile field. Insanity becomes epidemic. The world is full of incurablc sorrows and suffering ; the only way out is to run away from the world, and seek consolation in the dream of a better existence transcending that of the senses. Parenthood stands in the way of this only escape. Even in the chaos of social decomposition, spiritual cgoism cannot always get the better of biological laws expressing themselves as love and affection. Therefore, to secure spiritual uplift, man must sink below the level of animal ; must destroy his offsprings even before they are born. He must not only make a monstrosity of himself by the futile cffort to violate all the laws of nature ; he must destroy the posterity, thercby committing gress violence against mother nature herself.
Multiplication is the law of nature. The social value of asceticism, when it first appeared as a wide-spread cult, was somewhat analogous to that of the modern proletarian movement of birthcontrol. Conscientious people are reluctant to 254
