also does the same principle apply to the education of a child for whose conscience, as for whose life, the parent is responsible.  The moral right of the parent, which is one with that of the child in that period of life, is fundamental.  It constitutes the bed-rock on which rest all other rights in matters of education.  To deny that principle, to deflect it from its proper meaning, to recognize it only partially, is to blast the very foundation of human nature.  No reason of common good, of citizenship, can overthrow this right; on the contrary, it presupposes it; for, the State can only interfere to protect and help this right.  It can never suppress it, and only supplement it when the parents are deficient and fall short of this sacred duty they owe their offspring.

II.—­A Social Reason

Society is made up of various units, lending to one another support by the mutual participation in the activities of life.  The family—­the first in order of time and dignity—­is beyond doubt the principal and central unit.  The other social factors presuppose it and exist for its protection.  Is it not the source from which springs the very life of the individual and wherein society replenishes its forces?  The placing of the individual as the specific social unit of our modern democracy is a pernicious error.  This fallacy has destroyed Society by upsetting the essential order of its units and has robbed the individual of his most elementary rights.

The substitution of the State for the family is most detrimental in any sphere of life.  In matters of education it is nothing short of a disaster.  The “State School Teacher” is an anomaly.  It is the subversion of true social order for it constitutes “an unwarranted interference of the State in a function preeminently social.  Education is a social function and cannot be converted into a governmental charge without violence to it.”  What Treitsche said of the Judiciary Power in a country may well be applied to education.  “We find the first and fundamental principle of jurisprudence to be that no one should be withdrawn from the jurisdiction of his natural judge.”  The natural school of the child is the family; the common school should be nothing but an extension of the home.  The mission of the school is to supplement the home and not to supplant it.  The child and the parent therefore are entitled to have the same atmosphere pervade both school and home.  Everything that is relevant to education belongs to the family.  A policy that favours intrusion of an undue influence of the State in the school and destroys home authority and parental influence is unnatural and therefore anti-social.  The State is not the natural teacher of the child.