Then the child, who has received its life from sound, loving human beings and has been afterwards brought up wisely and lovingly, will be called legitimate, even if its parents have been united in complete freedom. Then will the child, who has been born in a loveless marriage, and has been burdened by the fault of its parents with bodily or mental disease, be regarded as illegitimate, even if its parents have been united in marriage by the Pope at St. Peter's. The shadow of contempt will not fall on the unmarried tender mother of a radiantly healthy child, but on the legitimate or illegitimate mother of a being made degenerate by the misdeeds of its forefathers. In a much discussed drama called _The Lion's Whelp_, there occurs the following dialogue between an older and younger man: THE OLDER MAN: The next century will be the century of the child, just as this century has been the woman's century. When the child gets his rights, morality will be perfected. Then every man will know that he is bound to the life which he has produced with other bonds, than those imposed by society and the laws. You understand that a man cannot be released from his duty as father even if he travels around the world; a kingdom can be given and taken away, but not fatherhood. THE YOUTH: I know this. THE OLDER MAN: But in this all righteousness is still not fulfilled--in man's carefully preserving the life which he has called into existence. No man can early enough think over the other question, whether and when he has the right to call life into existence. This dialogue has supplied me with a title for this book. It is the point of departure of my assertion, that the first right of the child is to select its own parents. What here must be first considered is the thought constantly being brought out by Darwinian writers, that the natural sciences, in which must now be numbered psychology, should be the basis of juristic science as well as of pedagogy. Man must come to learn the laws of natural selection and act in the spirit of these laws. Man must arrange the punishments of society in the service of development; they must be protective measures for natural selection. In the first place this must be secured by hindering the criminal type from perpetuating itself. The characteristics of this type can only be determined by specialists. But the criminal must be prevented from handing on his characteristics to his posterity. So the human race will be gradually freed from atavisms which reproduce lower and preceding stages of development. This is the first condition of that evolution by which mankind will be able to let the ape and tiger die. Then comes the requirement that those with inherited physical or psychical diseases shall not transmit them to an offspring.