The idea of a State which is outside the community is but a survival in another form of that antiquated notion which compelled Louis XIV to declare "L'Etat c'est moi!" A State which admits that the individuals composing it are incompetent to perform their own most sacred and intimate functions, and takes upon itself to perform them instead, attempts a task which would be undesirable, even if it were possible of achievement.

It must always be remembered that a State which proposes to relieve its constituent members of their natural functions and responsibilities attempts something quite different from the State which seeks to aid its members to fulfil their own biological and social functions more adequately.

A State which enables its mothers to rest when they are child-bearing is engaged in a reasonable task; a State which takes over its mothers' children is reducing philanthropy to absurdity.

It is easy to realize this if we consider the inevitable course of circumstances under a system of "State-nurseries." The child would be removed from its natural mother at the earliest age, but some one has to perform the mother's duties; the substitute must therefore be properly trained for such duties; and in exercising them under favorable circumstances a maternal relationship is developed between the child and the "mother," who doubtless possesses natural maternal instincts but has no natural maternal bond to the child she is mothering.

Such a relationship tends to become on both sides practically and emotionally the real relationship.