Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/705

Rh we are diffusing the belief that it is not the concern of parents to fit their children for the business of life; but that the nation is bound to do this. Everywhere there is a tacit enunciation of the marvellous doctrine that citizens are not responsible individually for the bringing up each of his own children, but that these same citizens, incorporated into a society, are each of them responsible for the bringing up of everybody else's children! The obligation does not fall upon A in his capacity of father to rear the minds as well as the bodies of his offspring; but in his capacity of citizen there does fall on him the obligation of mentally rearing the offspring of B, C, D, and the rest, who similarly have their direct parental obligations made secondary to their indirect obligations to children not their own! Already it is estimated that, as matters are now being arranged, parents will soon pay in school-fees for their own children only one-sixth of the amount which is paid by them through taxes, rates, and voluntary contributions, for children at large: in terms of money, the claims of children at large to their care will be taken as six times the claim of their own children! And, if, looking back forty years, we observe the growth of the public claim versus the private claim, we may infer that the private claim will presently be absorbed wholly. Already the correlative theory is becoming so definite and positive that you meet with the notion, uttered as though it were an unquestionable truth, that criminals are "society's failures." Presently it will be seen that, since good bodily development, as well as good mental development, is a prerequisite to good citizenship (for without it the citizen cannot maintain himself, and so avoid wrong-doing), society is responsible also for the proper feeding and clothing of children: indeed, in school-board discussions, there is already an occasional admission that no logically-defensible halting-place can be found between the two. And so we are progressing toward the wonderful notion, here and there finding tacit expression, that people are to marry when they feel inclined, and other people are to take the consequences!

And this is thought to be the policy conducive to improvement of behavior. Men who have been made improvident by shielding them from many of the evil results of improvidence are now to be made more provident by further shielding them from the evil results of improvidence. Having had their self-control decreased by social arrangements which lessened the need for self-control, other social arrangements are devised which will make self-control still less needful: and it is hoped so to make self-control greater. This expectation is absolutely at variance with the whole order of things. Life of every kind, human included, proceeds on an exactly-opposite principle. All lower types of beings show us that the rearing of offspring affords the highest discipline for the faculties. The parental instinct is everywhere that which calls out the energies most persistently, and in the greatest degree exercises the intelligence. The self-sacrifice and the