_Reasons for these Legal Disabilities._--The defenders of the existing legal order, when asked why it is that the civil law deals so harshly with the illegitimate child, are accustomed to answer as follows. Marriage is the foundation of society; if the legal position of the illegitimate child were as good as that of the legitimate child, this foundation would be shattered. Those who enter into illegitimate sexual relationships, and even the issue of such relationships, must incur serious legal disabilities; for otherwise the principal motive to marriage would be removed, and people would light-heartedly enter into illegitimate sexual unions. Ordinarily, it is only upon the basis of permanent marriage that a groundwork can be erected providing for those moral principles which are the indispensable preconditions of the legal rights and duties of family life; only in permanent marriage, and the family life which is the outcome of permanent marriage, do we obtain adequate guarantees for the fulfilment of these duties and for the proper exercise of these rights. It is only in an insignificant minority of instances that the natural association between an illegitimate child and its father leads to the formation of a more intimate bond between the two. In most cases, the father is indifferent and even hostile to his illegitimate child. He regards it as a burden, and has no interest in its well-being, or in its bodily and mental development. Only in the rarest cases does an illegitimate child share directly in the family life and in the property of the father; and if the father does take over the care for and upbringing of the child, he often does this solely in his own financial interest, in order subsequently to hand over the care of the child to the person who will undertake this at the cheapest rate. In such cases the moral and circumstantial prerequisites to the foundation of true family relationships are utterly lacking; and this is true above all of those cases in which the fatherhood of the child is not voluntarily acknowledged, but is admitted as the sequel of a successful bastardy suit. It has also to be remembered that the proof of the fatherhood of an illegitimate child, though it cannot be regarded as impossible, is nevertheless beset by numerous and considerable practical difficulties; and, in addition, that the adoption of legal measures to enable the paternity of an illegitimate child to be established with comparative ease would involve very grave social dangers, if the acceptance of extensive family responsibilities were to be made consequent upon such proof of paternity. The laws of inheritance protect the institution of private property and the institution of legal marriage; for the integrity of both of these institutions would be threatened if the illegitimate child were endowed with the right to inherit its father’s property.