aterial
development and all the natural evolution of life; hygiene burst these
bonds. And every one felt that a liberation had been effected; every
one repeated in view of the accomplished fact: children should be
free. The direct correspondence between "conditions of physical life
fulfilled" and "liberty acquired" is now universally and intuitively
recognized. Thus the infant is treated like a young plant. Children
to-day enjoy the rights which from time immemorial have been accorded
to the vegetables of a well-kept garden. Good food, oxygen, suitable
temperature, the careful elimination of parasites that produce
disease; yes, henceforth we may say that the son of a prince will be
tended with as much care as the finest rose-tree of a villa.

The old comparison of a child to a flower is the reality to which we
now aspire; though even this is a privilege reserved for the more
fortunate children. But let us beware of so grave an error. The babe
is a man. That which suffices for a plant cannot be sufficient for
him. Consider the depth of misery into which a paralyzed man has sunk
when we say of him: "He merely vegetates; as a man, he is dead," and
lament that there is nothing but his body left.

The infant as a _man_--such is the figure we ought to keep in view. We
must behold him amidst our tumultuous human society and see how with
heroic vigor he aspires to life.

What are the rights of children? Let us consider them for a moment as
a social class, as a class of workers, for as a fact they are laboring
to produce men. They are the future generation. They work, undergoing
the fatigues of physical and spiritual growth. They continue the work
carried on for a few months by their mothers, but their task is a more
laborious, complex, and difficult one. When they are born they possess
nothing but potentialities; they have to do everything in a world
which, as even adults admit, is full of difficulties. What is done to
help these frail pilgrims in an unknown world? They are born more
fragile and helpless than an animal, and in a few years they have to
become men, to be units in a highly complicated organized society,
built up by the secular effort of innumerable generations. At a
period in which civilization, that is, the possibility of right
living, is based upon rights energetically acquired and consecrated by
laws, what rights has he who comes among us without strength and
without thought? Like the infant Moses lying in t