“Get on with the lesson, my dear,” said I. “I am determined to learn and not to argue. What did your omnipresent new woman do to improve the human stock so fast?”
Then Nellie settled down in earnest and gave me all I wanted—possibly more.
“They wakened as if to a new idea, to their own natural duty as mothers; to the need of a high personal standard of health and character in both parents. That gave us a better start right away—clean-born, vigorous children, inheriting strength and purity.
“Then came the change in conditions, a change so great you’ve hardly glimpsed it yet. No more, never more again, please God, that brutal hunger and uncertainty, that black devil of want and fear. Everybody—everybody—sure of decent living! That one thing lifted the heaviest single shadow from the world, and from the children.
“Nobody is overworked now. Nobody is tired, unless they tire themselves unnecessarily. People live sanely, safely, easily. The difference to children, both in nature and nurture, is very great. They all have proper nourishment, and clothing, and environment—from birth.
“And with that, as advance in special conditions for child-culture, we build for babies now. We, as a community, provide suitably for our most important citizens.”
At this point I opened my mouth to say something, but presently shut it again.
“Good boy!” said Nellie. “I’ll show you later.”
“The next is specialized care. That one thing is enough, almost, to account for it all. To think of all the ages when our poor babies had no benefit at all of the advance in human intelligence!
“We had the best and wisest specialists we could train and hire in every other field of life—and the babies left utterly at the mercy of amateurs!
“Well, I mustn’t stop to rage at past history. We do better now. John, guess the salary of the head of the baby-gardens in a city.”
“Oh, call it a million, and go on,” I said cheerfully; which somewhat disconcerted her.
“It’s as big a place as being head of Harvard College,” she said, “and better paid than that used to be. Our highest and finest people study for this work. Real geniuses, some of them. The babies, all the babies, mind you, get the benefit of the best wisdom we have. And it grows fast. We are learning by doing it. Every year we do better. ‘Growing up’ is an easier process than it used to be.”
“I’ll have to accept it for the sake of argument,” I agreed. “It’s the last point I care most for, I think. All these new consciousnesses you were so glib about. I guess you can’t describe that so easily.”
She grew thoughtful, rocking to and fro for a few moments.
“No,” she said at length, “it’s not so easy. But I’ll try. I wasn’t very glib, really. I spoke of religion, art, civics, science, industry, wealth, and efficiency, didn’t I? Now let’s see how they apply to the children.
“This religion—Dear me, John! am I to explain the greatest sunburst of truth that ever was—in two minutes?”
“Oh, no,” I said loftily. “I’ll give you five! You’ve got to try, anyway.”
So she tried.
“In place of revelation and belief,” she said slowly, “we now have facts and knowledge. We used to believe in God—variously, and teach the belief as a matter of duty. Now we know God, as much as we know anything else—more than we know anything else—it is the fact of life.
“This is the base of knowledge, underlying all other knowledge, simple and safe and sure—and we can teach it to children! The child mind, opening to this lovely world, is no longer filled with horrible or ridiculous old ideas—it learns to know the lovely truth of life.”
She looked so serenely beautiful, and sat so still after she said this, that I felt a little awkward.
“I don’t mean to jar on you, Nellie,” I said. “I didn’t know you were so—religious.”
Then she laughed again merrily. “I’m not,” she said. “No more than anybody is. We don’t have ‘religious’ people any more, John. It’s not a separate thing; a ‘body of doctrine’ and set of observances—it is what all of us have at the bottom of everything else, the underlying basic fact of life. And it goes far, very far indeed, to make the strong good cheer you see in these children’s faces.
“They have never been frightened, John. They have never been told any of those awful things we used to tell them. There is no struggle with churchgoing, no gagging over doctrines, no mysterious queer mess—only life. Life is now open to our children, clear, brilliant, satisfying, and yet stimulating.
“Of course, I don’t mean that this applies equally to every last one. The material benefit does, that could be enforced by law where necessary; but this world-wave of new knowledge is irregular, of course. It has spread wider, and gone faster than any of the old religions ever did, but you can find people yet who believe things almost as dreadful as father did!”
I well remembered my father’s lingering Calvinism, and appreciated its horrors.
“Our educators have recognized a new duty to children,” Nellie went on; “to stand between them and the past. We recognize that the child mind should lift and lead the world; and we feed it with our newest, not our oldest ideas.
“Also we encourage it to wander on ahead, fearless and happy. I began to tell you the other day—and you snubbed me, John, you did really!—that we have a new literature for children, and have dropped the old.”
At this piece of information I could no longer preserve the attitude of a patient listener. I sat back and stared at my sister, while the full awfulness of this condition slowly rolled over me.
“Do you mean,” I said slowly, “that children are taught nothing of the past?”
“Oh, no, indeed; they are taught about the past from the earth’s beginning. In the mind of every child is a clear view of how life has grown
