It may be asked: what if the mother is ill and unable to suckle her child? In such a case the child of the sick woman is the unfortunate one. Why should another have to suffer for his misfortune? However poverty-stricken individuals may be, we do not allow them to take from others the wealth that is so urgently needed by them. If in these days an Emperor could be cured of terrible sufferings by immersion in a bath of human blood, he could not bleed healthy men for the purpose as a barbarian Emperor would have done. These are the things that make up our civilization. This it is which differentiates us from pirates and cannibals. The rights of the adult are recognized.
But not the rights of the infant. [1] What an implication of 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?
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 deeds of such grave injustice, not to say crimes, without recognizing them as such, what minor forms of oppression shall we not readily condone in our dealings with the child?
How we receive the infants that come into the world.—Let us look around. Only of late has any preparation been made to receive this sublime guest. It is not very long ago that little beds for children were first made; among all the innumerable tasteless, superfluous, and extravagant objects of commerce, let us see what things are intended for the child. No washstands, no sofas, no tables, no brushes. Among all the many houses, there is not one house for him and his like, and only rich and fortunate children have even a room of their own, more or less a place of exile.
Let us imagine ourselves subjected for even a single day to the miseries to which he is condemned.