Introduction

The above general reflections are merely intended to suggest that all our institutions, even those most intimately connected with what used to be called instinct, are bound in the near future to become far more deHberate and conscious than they have been or are now, and that this must apply in particular to the getting and rearing of children. The new way may be better than the old; it also may easily be worse. But the new knowledge of our times has been thrust so rudely into the mechanism of traditional behavior that the old patterns cannot survive, and new ones for good or evil have become imperative.