DISCUSSION 
over the years. In Roman days, the father had the right to 
kill his children, but today if I invite my cousin to come over 
to my house he says “‘I can’t come, I have no sitter, and I 
would be taken to jail for leaving my children alone’’. On the 
other hand every parent has a right to fill the brain of his 
child with the most complete nonsense, and to engrain it so 
deeply into the brain that the child can never get rid of it. 
This is a right which should be abolished. 
Huxley: Surely you wouldn’t say that a parent has no right 
to inculcate anything into his children? Bertrand Russell 
started a school at Telegraph Hill, where the children were to 
do everything they liked; on principle, he was never going to 
rebuke them or punish them. He was once asked whether he 
had ever had to punish any of the children and he said, “‘ Well, 
I did once, regretfully, when I found the older children putting 
pins into the younger children’s milk”’. 
Comfort: We haven’t yet discussed the time-honoured 
problem of revolution—which, although we have not used the 
word, is what we are discussing—of how to bring about a 
fundamental change in society by planning. I agree with nearly 
everything Dr. Chisholm said, but didn’t he a little underrate 
the sociality of man in his suggestion that human beings 
generally adhere first of all to the local group, and have very 
little feeling, say, for what happens in south-east Asia if they 
live in Europe? This is to a large extent true; it is true because 
it is very difficult for people who are at a great distance and 
out of sight to have the same empathy as those who are near. 
But our social behaviour is really built up originally from these 
group loyalties, and it is by acquiring a group loyalty within 
the family that we acquire a loyalty to the human race. 
One of the troubles is, of course, that today we get no chance 
to express that sociality to the full, because nearly all the more 
deplorable policies are a result of our habit of delegating deci- 
sions to individuals over whom we have little control. I think 
the average sense of the human race would have been very much 
against, for instance, Hitler’s activities, or the activities of 
bomb manufacturers. Such activities have in each case been 
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