Means to an end?

''I THINK this is a progression of life.'' These words, with which Dr Peter Liu, of Hong Kong's first sex selection clinic, described his money-making service (Sunday Morning Post, November 7), reminded me of the severe judgment J. R. R. Tolkien, the imaginative author of The Lord of the Rings, passed on his times and civilisation, which, not unexpectedly, look so akin to our own.

Ours is an age, he said, of ''improved means to deteriorated ends''.

FR. LANFRANCO FEDRIGOTTI Hong Kong