try-go" outside it to keep
off marauders. In this common care of the young we see what is in all
essentials marriage, though some may prefer to dignify the word by
confining it to those human associations which have been blessed by
Church and State, even though the father throws the baby at the mother,
or sends her into the streets to earn her bread and his beer.

If some of our modern reformers knew any biology, or even happened to
visit a music-hall where the biograph was showing scenes of bird-life,
they would learn that the human arrangement whereby the father goes out
and forages for mother and children has roots in hoary antiquity. The
pity is that there is no one to point the moral to the crowd when the
father-bird is seen returning with delicacies for the mother, who tends
her nest and its occupants.

The reader will already have anticipated the conclusion, to which, as I
see it, the study of the fundamental laws of life must lead the
sociologist in this case. It is that the duty of the father is to
support the mother and children, and that the duty of the State is to
see that he does this.

Thus, if asked whether I believe in the endowment of motherhood, I
reply, yes, indeed, I believe in the endowment of motherhood by the
corresponding fatherhood. If our first principles are sound, we must
believe that the mother must be endowed or provided for; there can be no
difference of opinion so far. Often, as we have seen, there is no
corresponding fatherhood, for the mother may be a widow, or unmarried
and unable to find the father. But where the corresponding fatherhood
exists, we fly directly in the face of Nature, we deny the consistent
teaching of evolution as the study of sub-human life reveals it to us,
if we do not turn to the father and say, this is your act, for which you
are responsible.

At all times the community has been entitled to say this to the father.
It is even more entitled to say so now, when, as everyone knows,
parenthood has come so entirely under the sway of human volition. The
more knowledge and power the more responsibility. The more important the
deed, the more responsible must we hold the doer. The time has come when
fatherhood, whether within marriage or without it, must be reckoned a
deliberate, provident, foreseen, all-important, responsible act, for
which the father must always be held to account.

On a recent public occasion, having endeavoured to show that the history
of animal