64 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 



persons. It is certain that lie will be so circum- 

 scribed in power, lie will be so unlike other per- 

 sons that we know a.s such, that the remark is 

 practically true. A new-born babe, henceforth 

 cared for by some kind animal, such as the fabled 

 wolf which suckled Romulus and Remus, and 

 never coming in contact with human kind, would 

 be such a defective human being, and so much 

 like the animals with which he grew up, that there 

 would be no suggestion of personality except the 

 form of his body. So the real self is the second 

 self, which is yet to become after his physical 

 birth, and the contribution to his being is chiefly 

 through the mother and father who watch over 

 him. They are giving birth to him all through 

 the years of his developing selfhood. 



In assuming the possibility of a germinal ori- 

 gin of the spirit apart from the germinal origin 

 of the body, we recognize that we are quite be- 

 yond the boundary of the known. However, the 

 supposition will be justified if by it we can ra- 

 tionalize, even in a small degree, this very mys- 

 terious realm. The objections to it seem to be 

 born chiefly from materialism, and make the doc- 

 trine of immortality impossible. In our specula- 

 tion we are doing much the same as we do after 

 the death of the body. It is about as much out- 

 side the realm of the known to imagine the spirit 

 as existing after the physical dissolution of the 

 body as it is to imagine the physical organism 

 before birth as not yet inhabited with a spirit. It 



