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 mere descent is a notion no longer favoured.  I believe that young mothers sometimes, before parting with their children, impress upon them some indelible mark by which it may be possible hereafter to recognise them; but such recognitions seldom occur.  Maternal affection is discountenanced as a purely animal instinct, a survival from a lower grade of organisation, and does not generally outlast a ten years’ separation; while paternal love is utterly scouted as an absurdity to which even the higher animals are not subject.  Boys are kept in the public establishments until the age of twelve, those from ten to twelve being separated from the younger ones and passing through the higher education in separate colleges.  The girls are educated apart till they complete their tenth year, and are almost invariably married in the course of the next.  At first, under the influence of the theory of sexual equality, both received their intellectual instruction in the same classes and passed through the same examinations.  Separation was soon found necessary; but still girls passed through the same intellectual training as their brothers.  Experience, however, showed that this would not answer.  Those girls who distinguished themselves in the examinations were, with scarcely an exception, found unattractive as wives and unfit to be mothers.  A very much