It grew evident that parents who had been exceptionally successful in the two children they had brought forth, reared, and launched full-fledged on the career of life should be permitted and stimulated to resume parentage. It was considered one of the highest privileges and honours to be selected as parents again by the magnetic consciousness of the nation. There was needed no formal agreement or resolution; the mind of the race was known without consulting it openly; and every pair felt in a moment that they were selected for reparentage; they required no stimulation, no permission to enter on the patriotic duty. And all considered it a duty of the loftiest kind. Passion in the race burned low; no longer was it a sting or goad that had to be mastered; it was in short no more a passion, such as the use of imagination, the love of the race, or the yearning after advance had become. The animal element in it had grown insignificant, and left it at the bidding of intellect and will. These tried parents had thus no sensuous pleasure to seek in the new task assigned to them. They took it upon them as a duty, and their chief pleasure lay in the honour they had been paid, and in the service they were doing to the race and to the progress of their humanity. A second necessity of the new position was earlier marriage on the part of the men and women of the community. As soon as bare maturity had been reached, pairing now began. First it had to be scientifically ascertained that all the merely primitive stages of mankind had been passed through, not only the prehistoric, but the historical. It would be one of the greatest of evils to allow the privilege of parenting for the community to any who might have yet to go through a stage of individual life that represented centuries of the past of mankind. Little better would this be than stocking their island with children from their exiles. It was a question of testing every individual; for some passed more rapidly through the life of their ancestry than others; and these were not always the best as parents or even as citizens. Every tissue and faculty had to be tested, after careful study of the records of the childhood and youth. No possible prospect or chance of atavistic taint was overlooked.