_The Right View._--These views are only partially correct. It may be true that a great proportion of illegitimate children are weakly, and perhaps for this reason their mortality-rate and criminality-rate are excessive; it is also probable that in the absence of child-protection their death-rate would be considerably higher than it is. Elsewhere in this work we shall consider whether, and to what extent, it is possible to prevent the birth of illegitimate children. It may also be true that the born criminal is physically, intellectually, and morally degenerate, and that for these reasons in the absence of child-protection he would probably succumb in early life. The race is not always damaged by the survival of those who have suffered from disease. The disease may be of such a kind that the patient who survives may recover completely, and may procreate perfectly healthy children. It is a very thorny question whether it can ever be right to refrain from the cure of certain patients, because to cure them would be injurious to the race. Here humanity and race-interest seem to conflict. If, in the future, by the proper application of preventive methods, we are able to ensure that very few such sick persons shall exist, it will no longer be necessary to attempt to cure such as do exist, for in that day the application of the euthanasia in such cases will no longer be regarded as inhuman, but rather as perfectly natural and right. To the assertion that only the healthy and strong should be protected, we may answer that the sickly and the weakly are far more in need of such protection. It is perfectly true that those who are not adapted to the conditions of their environment perish. But one of the chief aims of child protection is to enable children to become capable of adaptation to their environment; and in the majority of children we are able to effect this. Even those in whom this is unattainable ought not to be neglected, because, while they are slowly succumbing, society suffers much injury from them. One who is ill or weak from one point of view only may nevertheless be a useful member of society, since perhaps in some other relationship he may be strong or healthy. In the present state of our knowledge, we are unable during a child’s early years, and still less immediately after birth, to determine positively whether the child is intellectually or morally defective, whether it is a born criminal, or whether it is one capable of developing into a useful member of society. We must certainly dispute the assertion that a child which is bodily weak is of necessity also intellectually and morally defective, since thousands of instances establish the fact that a child which is bodily weak often proves to be a useful member of society. If there were no child-protection, children would perish whose survival is unquestionably desirable.