We read here the arguments of modernity. Once the natural world and its phenomena lose their prescriptive value, and come to be viewed as irrational and defective matter, to be organized and manipulated to meet the needs of a humanity poorly and defectively provided for by the natural order, then notions of teleology lose their grip. Hence, modern arguments about sexual intercourse regard procreation - understood, from the teleological perspective, as one of the ends of the act - as a purely voluntary consequence of coition, and, indeed, one to be guarded against as assiduously as one guards against burglars and/or vampiric parasites.