DOMESTIC RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 523 



While an average increase of juvenile freedom is to be anticipated, 

 there is reason to think that here and there it has already gone too 

 fai'. I refer to the United States. Besides in some cases unduly 

 subordinating the lives of adults, the degree of independence tliere 

 allowed to the young appears to have the effect of bringing them for- 

 ward prematurely, initiating them too early in the excitements proper 

 to maturity, and so tending to exhaust the interests of life before it is 

 half spent. Such regulation of childhood as conduces to full utiliza- 

 tion of childish activities and pleasures, before the activities and pleas- 

 ures of manhood and womanhood are entered upon, is better for off- 

 spring at the same time that it is better for parents. 



How far is parental authority to go? and at what point shall 

 political authority check it ? are questions to be answered in no satis- 

 factory way. Already I have given reasons for thinking that the 

 l)Owers and functions of parents have been too far assumed by the 

 state; and that probably a reintegration of the family will follow its 

 present undue disintegration. It seems possible that from the early 

 form in which social and family organizations are compulsory in char- 

 acter, we are passing through semi-militant, semi-industrial phases, in 

 wliich the organizations of both state and family are partly compul- 

 sory, partly voluntary, in character ; and that, along with complete 

 social reintegration on the basis of voluntary cooperation, will come 

 domestic reintegration of allied kind, under which the life of the fam- 

 ily will again become as distinct from the life of the state as it origi- 

 nally was. Still there remain the theoretical difficulties of deciding 

 how far the powers of parents over children may be cariicd ; to what 

 extent disregard of parental responsibilities is to be tolerated ; when 

 does the child cease to be a unit of the family and become a unit of 

 the state. Practically, however, these questions will need no solving ; 

 since the same changes of character which bring about the highest 

 form of family will almost universally prevent the rise of difficulties 

 which result from characters of lower types proper to lower socie- 

 ties. 



Moreover, there always remains a security. Whatever conduces 

 to the highest welfare of offspring must more and more establish itself 

 through the replacing of children of inferior parents reared in inferior 

 ways by children of better parents reared in better ways. As lower 

 creatures at large have been preserved and advanced through the 

 insti'umentality of parental instincts ; and as in the course of human 

 evolution the domestic relations originating from the need for pro- 

 longed care of offspring liave been assuming higher forms ; and as the 

 care taken of offspring has been becoming greater and more enduring ; 

 we need not doubt that, in the future, along with the more altruistic 

 nature accompanying a higher social type, there will come I'elations 

 of parents and children needing no external control to insure their 

 well-working. 



