now freely working out the salvation of the race, but a profound moral
sentiment has come to its support. Individualism, which in your day was the
animating idea of society, not only was fatal to any vital sentiment of
brotherhood and common interest among living men, but equally to any realization
of the responsibility of the living for the generation to follow. To-day this
sense of responsibility, practically unrecognized in all previous ages, has
become one of the great ethical ideas of the race, reinforcing, with an intense
conviction of duty, the natural impulse to seek in marriage the best and noblest
of the other sex. The result is, that not all the encouragements and incentives
of every sort which we have provided to develop industry, talent, genius,
excellence of whatever kind, are comparable in their effect on our young men
with the fact that our women sit aloft as judges of the race and reserve
themselves to reward the winners. Of all the whips, and spurs, and baits, and
prizes, there is none like the thought of the radiant faces which the laggards
will find averted.
    Celibates nowadays are almost invariably men who have failed to acquit
themselves creditably in the work of life. The woman must be a courageous one,
with a very evil sort of courage, too, whom pity for one of these unfortunates
should lead to defy the opinion of her generation - for otherwise she is free -
so far as to accept him for a husband. I should add that, more exacting and
difficult to resist than any other element in that opinion, she would find the
sentiment of her own sex. Our women have risen to the full height of their
responsibility as the wardens of the world to come, to whose keeping the keys of
the future are confided. Their feeling of duty in this respect amounts to a
sense of religious consecration. It is a cult in which they educate their
daughters from childhood.«
    After going to my room that night, I sat up late to read a romance of
Berrian, handed me by Dr. Leete, the plot of which turned on a situation
suggested by his last words, concerning the modern view of parental
responsibility. A similar situation would almost certainly have been treated by
a nineteenth century romancist so as to excite the morbid sympathy of the reader
with the sentimental selfishness of the lovers, and his resentment toward the
unwritten law which they outraged. I need not describe - for who has not read
»Ruth Elton?« - how different is the course which Berrian takes, and with what
tremendous effect he enforces the principle which he states: