most clearly that no
measures for the prevention or repression of crime will ever be adequate
which are not based upon a scientific system of education. Whatever this
system may prove to be, it must have one distinct aim, and that is to
train all its members to love, and to work for, the social state. This
aim must be accomplished most thoroughly no matter what the cost may be.

The decreasing birth-rate points to other conclusions than the obvious
one that a large number of persons must be using preventive means. It
points to a widespread selfishness which regards children as an
intolerable burden, as in fact nothing less than a grievous misfortune.
It is obvious that where children are so regarded a blight has fallen
upon the domestic life. Home cannot be the brightest spot on earth to
them; neither can the father and mother be their sympathetic guides,
counsellors, and protectors. Nor can those children be studied (by those
who alone have the special faculty for studying them) in order that
their secret aims and ambitions and the difficulties which obstruct
these aims and ambitions, may be understood.

It follows then that from parental selfishness a great number (and close
observation leads one to believe that by far the greater proportion) of
the children of this generation and in this colony, are growing up with
less care and attention being bestowed upon them than what their parents
are prepared to bestow upon even their very horses or their dogs. This
factor of parental selfishness cannot be ignored either academically or
practically. It must in some way be overcome, or at least its influence
for harm must be considerably reduced.

It would be interesting to discover how far this parental selfishness
was a deviation from true parental pride. Possibly it may not be so very
great as the vast difference in results may lead us to suppose, and if
this be so the reorganisation of the child's educational system will not
be insuperably difficult.

In many homes where there are more than two or three children, there is
a total lack of domestic sympathy and pride. The children are not taught
to love one another nor to understand and help one another. Adult
influence is very seldom brought to bear upon them, and, worst of all,
parental influence is either wanting, deficient or injurious. What
children suffer from this want in the development in their natures must
of necessity be, and it unquestionably is, sufficient to