MENTAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY. 687 



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 ob- 

 ligation 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 contribu- 

 tions, 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 correl- 

 ative 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 main- 

 tain 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 im- 

 providence. Having had their self-control decreased by social ar- 

 rangements which lessened the need for self-control, other social ar- 

 rangements 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 every- 

 where that which calls out the energies most persistently, and in the 

 greatest degree exercises the intelligence. The self-sacrifice and the 



