rland, these individuals are
nearly all tainted with alcoholism or pathological heredity; they
consist of alcoholics, incorrigibles, and congenital decadents, and
education can do little for them, because nearly all those who have a
better hereditary foundation have been able to earn their living by
honest work. In Russia, Galicia, and even in Vienna, we are, on the
contrary, astonished to see how many honest natures there are among
the disinherited, when they are provided with work and education.

This fact speaks more than the contradictory statements which the
fanatics of party politics hurl at each other's heads.

=Inquiry into Paternity.=--It will be objected that inquiry into
paternity is often very difficult and dangerous. I do not deny this;
but, when women have obtained their natural rights, and when the
education of young girls is guided by the principles which we have
enunciated in Chapter XVII, the matter will become much easier.
Moreover, even now, we can with energy and good will determine
paternity in most cases. Although the great improvement in means of
transport assists fugitives, it also favors the discovery and arrest
of individuals all over the world. International relations between all
civilized states are improving from day to day. When the world is more
completely conquered by civilization, we may hope that it will become
increasingly difficult for evildoers to escape their duties.

Regarding this question from all points of view it is impossible for
us to give up this primordial condition for the preservation of human
society, which consists in making parents responsible for the
nourishment and education of their children.

The famous ideas of phalanstery and promiscuity, so often advanced,
originated in theoretical and dogmatic minds which had lost their
instinctive sense of human nature, and ignored what natural science
and ethnology have revealed to us.

But the responsibility of parents extends to another domain--the duty
of not procreating children who are unhealthy in body and mind. We
shall return to this question later on.

=Guardianship.=--An excellent institution of our present legislation
is that of the guardianship of orphans, lunatics, etc. It requires to
be developed extensively and with care. On the contrary, an evil
custom is the right accorded by certain countries to parishes charged
with poor and abandoned orphans, of delivering them by public tender
to the man who offer