"What! Will the unborn choose the time of birth as well as their parents?"
"One is implicated in the other. Suppose the soul wished to be the son of an American Duke, naturally it would have to wait till aristocracy was developed across the Atlantic, say some time in the next century."
"I see. And is there a public opinion in Ante-land that regulates private action?"
"Yes, but I have now educated it to the higher ethics. It used to be the respectable thing to be born of strangers without one's own consent, though at the bottom of their souls many persons believed this to be sheer immorality, and cursed the day they were led to the cradle, and became the mere playthings of the parents who acquired them—pretty toys to be dandled and caressed, just a larger variety of doll. But all this is almost over. Henceforth birth will be considered immoral unless it is spontaneous—the outcome of an intelligent selection of parents, based on love."
"On love?"
"Yes; should not a child love its father and mother? and how can we expect it to love people it has never seen, to whom it is tied in the most brutal way, without a voice in the control of its destinies at the absolutely most important turning-point of its whole existence?"
"True, a child should love its parents," I conceded. "But is not the quiet, sober affection that springs up after birth, an affection founded on mutual association and mutual esteem, better than all the tempestuous ardours of pre-natal passion that may not survive the christening?"
"Ah, that is the good old orthodox cant!" cried Marindin, puffing out a great cloud of smoke. "What certainty is there this post-natal love would spring up? And, at any rate, a man would no longer be able to blame Providence if he found himself tied for life to a couple for whom he had nothing but loathing and contempt. Even the adherents of the old conception of compulsory childship begin to see that the stringency of the filial tie needs relaxation. Already it is recognised that in cases of cruelty the child may be divorced from the parent. But there is a hopeless incompatibility of temper and temperament which is not necessarily attended with cruelty. Drunkenness, lunacy, and criminality should also be regarded as valid grounds for divorce, the parent being no longer allowed to bear the name of the child it has dishonoured."
"But who shall say," I asked sceptically, "that the new self-appointed generation will be happier than the old? What guarantee is there that the choice of parents will be made with taste and discretion?"
Marindin shrugged his shoulders impatiently.