V.

_THAT WE MUST HAVE FEW MEN, IF WE WANT STRONG MEN._


In our modern revolt against the mediaeval notions of hereditary honor
and hereditary shame we have gone too far, for we have lost the
appreciation of the true dependence of children on parents. We have a
glib phrase about "the accident of birth," but it would puzzle anybody
to tell what it means. If A takes B to wife, it is not an accident that
he took B rather than C, D, or any other woman; and if A and B have a
child, X, that child's ties to ancestry and posterity, and his
relations to the human race, into which he has been born through A and
B, are in no sense accidental. The child's interest in the question
whether A should have married B or C is as material as anything one can
conceive of, and the fortune which made X the son of A, and not of
another man, is the most material fact in his destiny. If those things
were better understood public opinion about the ethics of marriage and
parentage would undergo a most salutary change. In following the modern
tendency of opinion we have lost sight of the due responsibility of
parents, and our legislation has thrown upon some parents the
responsibility, not only of their own children, but of those of
others.

The relation of parents and children is the only case of sacrifice in
Nature. Elsewhere equivalence of exchange prevails rigorously. The
parents, however, hand down to their children the return for all which
they had themselves inherited from their ancestors. They ought to hand
down the inheritance with increase. It is by this relation that the
human race keeps up a constantly advancing contest with Nature. The