Note 67 — Chapter III

It is only among the bourgeoisie and the relatively well-to-do portion of the petty bourgeoisie that there can be any sufficient physical education for the children. Among the proletarians, and those of the petty bourgeoisie who are in a similar situation as regards material conditions, it is insufficient, and worse, if possible, among the lower proletariat. However, if there is a lack of it among these last, there is at times a superabundance among the bourgeoisie. There children are often brought up in such luxury that they are early made blasé and rendered unhappy for the future. Dr. Baer says upon this subject:67 “It is through other circumstances and causes that the children of the rich and well-to-do classes are brought to a condition of precocity, accompanied by sickly irritability and arrogant self-conceit. Here are good-living, luxury, and the superabundance of bodily enjoyments, the early familiarity with the theater, balls, and outside social life in general, which make them incapable of the harmless pleasures of childhood. Improper education in the family is responsible for the fact that children in widely separated social classes are already at any early age left to themselves and fall into evil ways. ‘One must have lived in a great city,’ says von Krafft-Ebing, ‘and have visited the hovels of the poor, and the palaces of the rich to know what mistakes in the bringing up of children are committed there, where the children of the poor, amidst dirt and drink, and those of the rich, amidst arrogance and rascality, are going to ruin physically and morally.… Every day may be seen children falling asleep at the theater or other places of amusement to which their parents’ folly and desire for pleasure have dragged them. Other parents provide for their children the doubtful happiness of children’s balls and soirées. Is it any wonder, then, if we now, especially in the great cities, very seldom meet with any real children?’ ”