AUTHOR. Children do not belong to their parents because they are not THINGS: to those who obstinately persist in believing them _property_, we say that Society has the right of dispossession for the public good. Then the social right over children is limited so far as principles are concerned to those of morality. Society has no right over religious beliefs which belong to the domain of spiritual jurisdiction. The power that should take away children from their parents because they were not of a certain religious faith would be guilty of despotism, and would merit universal execration. If you say that Society has no right to impose a dogma upon children, you speak truly; but I cannot conceive how you can entertain the thought of forbidding it the right to teach them, even against the will of their parents, enlightening science, purifying morality. Is it not the duty of society to secure the progress of its members, and can any one have a right to keep a human being in ignorance and evil? READER. You are right, and I condemn myself. Let us return to Marriage. I see with pleasure that you differ in opinion from a number of modern innovators who deny the lawfulness of social interference in the union of the sexes. AUTHOR. If the union were without protection, who would suffer by it? Not men, but rather women and children. No one can compel a man to live with a woman whom he has ceased to love; but he must be constrained to fulfill his duties with respect to the children born of this union, and to keep his business engagements: in wronging his companion and escaping from the burdens of paternity, he takes advantage of his liberty to the detriment of others: Society has a right to prevent this. READER. So you do not grant to Society the right of binding souls or bodies; but that of guaranteeing the contract of Marriage, and the obligations of the spouses towards their future children; of forcing them, in case of separation, to fulfill this last obligation? AUTHOR. Yes; thus in case of the rupture of the marriage tie, society has only to state publicly the responsibilities of the spouses, the number of children, and the name of the parent on whom their guardianship devolves, either by mutual consent or by social authority. And in confining itself to this part, Society would do more to prevent the separation of married couples than by all that it has hitherto foolishly invented for the purpose. The parties would be free to marry again; but what woman would be willing to unite herself to a man who was burdened with several children, or who had treated his first companion unkindly? What man would consent to wed a woman in the same position? Do you not think that the difficulty that would be experienced in contracting a new marriage would be a curb on the inconstancy and bad conduct that lead to a rupture?