454 'J^HE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



boys at school are subject to military discipline. Add to which that 

 parental oversight of marriageable children still goes so far that little 

 oj^jDortunity is afforded ior choice by the young people themselves. 

 In Germany, again, there is a stringency of rule in education allied to 

 the political stringency of rule. As writes a German lady long resi- 

 dent in England, and experienced as a teacher : " English children 

 are not tyraunized over they are guided by their parents. The spirit 

 of independence and personal rights is fostered. I can therefore un- 

 derstand the teacher who said he would rather teacli twenty German 

 [children] than one English child I understand him, but I do not 

 sympathize with him. The German child is nearly a slave compared 

 to the English child ; it is, therefore, more easily subdued by the one 

 in authority." 



Lastly come the facts that in the United States, long characterized 

 by great development of the industrial organization little qualified by 

 the militant, parental government has become extremely lax, and 

 girls and boys are nearly on a par in their positions : the independence 

 reached being such that young ladies often form their own circles of 

 acquaintance and carry on their intimacies without let or hinderance 

 from their fathers and mothers. 



As was to be anticipated, we thus find a series of changes in the 

 status of children parallel to the series of changes in the status of 

 women. 



In archaic societies, without law and having customs extending 

 over but some parts of life, there are no limits to the powers of 

 parents ; and the passions, daily exercised in conflict with brutes or 

 men, are restrained in the relations to offspring only by the philopro- 

 genitive instinct. 



Early the needs for a companion in arms, for an avenger, and pres- 

 ently for a performer of sacrifices, add to the fatherly feeling other 

 motives, personal and social, tending to give something like a status 

 to male children; but leaving female children still in the same posi- 

 tion as are the young of brutes. 



These relations of father to son and daughter, arising in advanced 

 groups of the archaic type, and becoming more settled where pastoral 

 life originates the patriarchal group, continue to characterize societies 

 that remain predominantly militant, whether evolved from the patri- 

 ai'chal group or otherwise: victory and defeat, which express the out- 

 come of militant activity, having for their correlatives despotism and 

 slavery in military organization, in political organization, and in 

 domestic organization. 



The status of children, in common with that ol women, rises in pro- 

 portion as the compulsory cooperation characterizing militant activi- 

 ties becomes qualified by the voluntary cooperation characterizing 

 industrial activities. We see this on comparing the most militant un- 



