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96 that flow from the relationship that they have brought about, to sacrifice themselves that the children may have success in the struggle for existence. Both morally and socially the doctrine here laid down is the one that underlies human welfare. There is no such penalty for error and folly as to see one's children suffer for it. There is no such reward for a well-spent life as to see one's children well-started in life owing to their parents' good health, good principles, fixed character, good breeding—in general, the whole outfit that enables men to fight the battle of life with success. Furthermore, we are not called upon to plot and plan for "the great interests of society," and all the other vague whims that are presented to us in high-sounding phrases. The great social interests solve themselves if every one simply attends to family duties, keeping himself clean and honest, and bringing up his children in virtue and good discipline. The reformers who are constantly dinning their social nostrums and state interference in our ears suppose that they are charged and commissioned to organize all the rest of us into "great social movements." In any sound study of the facts it will appear that the derived, wider, and more abstract interests are not to be pursued directly, that they never can be satisfied by direct effort, that they flow of themselves as consequences from right living in the household and in the individual career.

Let us go back now to our young couple. Having married for love and taken their liberty, they find that they were mistaken, and that there is an incompatibility of temper; instead, however, of bearing their own burden, and abiding by the duties that they have undertaken to each other and to their children, they now invoke the interference of the rest of society, by its laws and