"Before indulging," said one, "our parental affections, a quality of the mind, or of the heart as you would say, which we have in common with many of the inferior animals, we should consider what is best for the state and what is best for the child. Obviously it would be bad for the child to give him a defective education, to neglect the cultivation of his natural talents, and to let him grow up without a due amount of supervision. In like manner it would be bad for the state to have any of its citizens growing up incapable of rightly fulfilling their duties of citizenship. If our means or our engagements do not permit us to educate and train our children properly, it would be a most selfish act, in fact it would be the mere indulgence of a purely brute instinct to retain these children with us, and allow them to grow up uneducated and not properly cared for. In order to gratify that low animal passion you dignify by the name of parental affection, why should we make bad citizens, and rear ungrateful children, who will, with justice, hate us when they discover that their prospects have been blighted in order that their parents' feelings might be spared?"
The reader will understand that I employed all the usual stock arguments to refute this revolting sophistry. I need not repeat what I said, as no British parent requires to be reminded of what is to be urged in defence of that purest and most sacred of the affections, parental love.
But I might as well have spoken to a stone wall. The arrogant conceit of these Colymbians is so great that they are incapable of appreciating the profoundest wisdom if it clashes with the maxims they
