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We are minds or souls inhabiting or, better, organically connected with bodies. Everyone knows the body cannot be neglected any more than the mind. But the most mental of the bodily reactions and the most bodily of the mental reactions are the emotions; and as far as present-day physiological researches have been able to discover, both are most closely interrelated by the interlocking system of ductless glands, among which the interstitial or sexual glands are the grand president of all the boards of directors.[3]

Tradition first, in classical Greek and Roman times, unduly overweighted the physical end and, in modern times, has attempted unduly to overweight the spiritual end of the balance, but neither of these processes has restored a balance which is fundamental to the highest type of Christianity—the balance between the erotic[4] and the egoistic-social trends.[5] This balance it is the object of this book to suggest, with the hope that such an approach to equilibrium of two tendencies that are now badly out of balance will help to show the futility of much activity that is now called civilized, but which is not most adapted to producing the greatest happiness of the individual, and through that, the greatest prosperity of such people as are destined by happiness and prosperity to survive the crumbling of the present state of society.