ase. Looking forward to nothing after death, they could only make
the best of the short life permitted to them and do their utmost to
lengthen it. In the assurance of speedy separation, affection became a
source of much more anxiety and sorrow than happiness. All ties being
precarious and their endurance short, their force became less and
less; till the utmost enjoyment of the longest possible life for
himself became the sole, or almost the sole, animating motive, the one
paramount interest, of each individual. The equality which logic had
established between the sexes dissolved the family tie. It was
impossible for law to dictate the conditions on which two free and
equal individuals should live together, merely because they differed
in sex. All the State could do it did; it insisted on a provision for
the children. But when parental affection was extinguished, such
provision could only be secured by handing over the infant and its
portion to the guardianship of the State. As children were troublesome
and noisy, the practice of giving them up to public officers to be
brought up in vast nurseries regulated on the strictest scientific
principles became the general rule, and was soon regarded as a duty;
what was at first almost openly avowed selfishness soon justifying and
glorifying itself on the ground that the children were better off
under the care of those whose undivided attention was given to them,
and in establishments where everything was regulated with sole regard
to their welfare, than they could be at home. No law compels us to
send our children to these establishments. In rare cases a favourite
will persuade her lord to retain her pet son and make him heir, but
both the Courts and public opinion discountenance this practice. Some
families, like my own, systematically retain their children and
educate them at home; but it is generally thought that in doing so we
do them a wrong, and our neighbours look askance upon so signal a
deviation from custom; the more so, perhaps, that they half suspect us
of dissenting from their views on other subjects, on which our
opinions do not so directly or so obviously affect our conduct, and on
which therefore we are not so easily convicted of free choice"
[heresy]. Here I inquired whether the birth and parentage of the
children sent to the public establishments were registered, so as to
permit their being reclaimed or inheriting property.

"No," he replied. "Inheritance by me