CHAPTER XIV

CHILDREN

New Orleans.

WHEN political philosophers announce their prin-
ciples and system-makers devise their con-
stitutions, they are apt to overlook the part played
by time. I mean the fact that no human individual
has a fixed status either in society or in the
universe, but is continually changing it and
becoming a different kind of individual in the
process of growing older from childhood to age.
When, for example, our philosophers discourse
about the " people " and their rights, or about
" government of the people, by the people and
for the people," it will generally be found, if
their meaning be closely examined, that they
are thinking of the " people" as individuals
about the prime of life and in full possession
of their powers* But, in most societies, these
fully-grown individuals, whom our philosophers
make to do duty as the " people," are a minority
in the total count, the majority consisting of
children and young persons of pre-voting age;
to say nothing of those at the other end who are
becoming senile* The consequence is that