baseness
the fact carries with it: we recognize the rights of adults indeed,
but not those of the child! We recognize justice, but only for those
who can protest and defend themselves; and for the rest, we remain
barbarians. Because to-day there may be peoples more or less highly
developed from the hygienic point of view, but they all belong to the
same civilization--a civilization based on the _right of the
strongest_.

When we begin seriously to examine the problem of the moral education
of the child, we ought to look around us a little, and survey the
world we have prepared for him. Are we willing that he should become
like us, unscrupulous in our dealings with the weak? that like us, his
consciousness should harbor ideas of a justice which stops short at
those who make no protests? Are we willing to make him like ourselves
half a civilized man in our dealings with our equals, and half a wild
beast when we encounter the innocent and oppressed?

[Footnote 1: Of course, should the child of the wet nurse have died,
there can be no question of an infringement of its rights. But such
cases have no relation to those in which the rich mother requires a
nurse for the child she is unable to suckle herself, owing to
pathological reasons.

I may draw attention to a precautionary measure which has become a law
in Germany: this prohibits the acceptance of a post as wet nurse by a
mother until six months after the birth of her own child. This
interval is considered sufficiently long to guarantee the health of
the infant. Moreover, the special care devoted to artificial feeding
in Germany provides a satisfactory substitute for wet nursing, in the
case of children who are deprived of maternal nourishment. Such laws
and provisions are a first step towards the recognition of the "civil
rights" of poor infants.]

If not, then before we offer moral education to the child, let us
imitate the priest who is about to ascend to the altar: he bows his
head in penitence and confesses his own sins before the whole
congregation.

This outlawed child is like a dislocated arm. Humanity cannot work at
the evolution of its morality until this arm has been put into its
place; and this will also end the pains and the paralysis of the
injured muscles attached to it: women. The social question of the
child is obviously the more complete and profound; it is the question
of our present and of our future.

If we can reconcile to our conscience dee