s out as nurses to rich Berlin families. Girls who give birth
to three or four illegitimate children, so as to be able to go out as
nurses, are no rarity; and they are sought after by the males of the
Spreewald according to their earnings in this business. Such a system is
utterly repellant from the view-point of bourgeois morality; from the
view-point of the family interests of the bourgeoisie it is considered
praiseworthy and desirable.

So soon as in the society of the future the child has grown up, it falls
in with the other children of its own age for play, and under common
surveillance. All that can be furnished for its mental and physical
culture is at hand, according to the measure of general intelligence.
Whosoever has watched children knows that they are brought up best in
the company of their equals, their sense of gregariousness and instinct
of imitation being generally strong. The smaller are strongly inclined
to take the older ones as example, and rather follow them than their own
parents. These qualities can be turned to advantage in education.[215]
The playgrounds and kindergartens are followed by a playful introduction
into the preliminaries of knowledge and of the various manual
occupations. This is followed up by agreeable mental and physical work,
connected with gymnastic exercises and free play in the skating rink and
swimming establishments; drills, wrestling, and exercises for both sexes
follow and supplement one another. The aim is to raise a healthy, hardy,
physically and mentally developed race. Step by step follows the
induction of the youth in the various practical pursuits--manufacturing,
horticulture, agriculture, the technique of the process of production,
etc.; nor is the development of the mind neglected in the several
branches of science.

The same process of "dusting" and improvement observed in the system of
production, is pursued in that of education; obsolete, superfluous and
harmful methods and subjects are dropped. The knowledge of natural
things, introduced in a natural way, will spur the desire for knowledge
infinitely more than a system of education in which one subject is at
odds with another, and each cancels the other, as, for instance, when
"religion" is taught on one hand, and on the other natural sciences and
natural history. The equipment of the school rooms and educational
establishments is in keeping with the high degree of culture of the new
social order. All the mea