_Rights of Children and our Obligation to them._ Political agitation has in the past been one of the most potent forces by the movement of which men and women have obtained redress from their disabilities, and have put forward their own views and enlisted sympathy in their own troubles. But infants and children, although provided with most effectual means of calling attention to certain of their personal wants, are unable even to formulate grievances of which they are not conscious, and posterity has naturally no voice in determining the course of our present actions although its very existence depends upon these. This is already partly realised, and there are not wanting those who are prepared to sacrifice much in order to champion the cause of those who have no means of establishing the claims they have to our consideration. Already, four years ago, public opinion expressed itself in public rule that a man and woman in begetting a child must take upon themselves the obligation and responsibility of seeing that that child is not subjected to cruelty and hardship.[32] It is but one step more to say that a man and woman shall be under obligation not to produce children when it is certain that from their want of physique they will have to undergo suffering, and will keep up but an unequal struggle with their fellows. _Our Sense of Obligation is Developing._ But our sense of obligation, just as it has grown in the past, is capable of development in the future, and that this sense will develop is probable from the fact that we are beholden to our fellowmen and ancestry far more than we at present realise. Not only do we owe our existence to others, but we owe to them most of our necessities, all our luxuries, our intellectual food, our music, poetry and language. Our possessions and even our ideas we owe to those millions who have for numberless generations toiled in their own behalf and ours. Alone we might obtain subsistence from roots and shell-fish, but as citizens of an organised State we have food and clothing for an easy expenditure of energy, and can obtain for the trying much of that which may be termed luxury, but which in reality is that which makes life worth living. This debt that we owe to those who have gone before us we can only repay to those who come after us, and the sense of obligation will grow as we become better educated in the broad facts of life and history. We shall increasingly be prepared to forego our pleasures, and to undertake that which may be personally disagreeable for the sake of others. The good of others has been, and will increasingly be, that to which our energies will turn, and the most fundamental good that we can achieve is that which will add to the organic excellence of the race.