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FRACMENTS OF A PRISONER'S DIARY the joint family. Under the patriarchal system of joint family, still cherished in India as a venerable social institution, parents rear children with the expectation of being recompensated in old age. The relation between parents and children is a sort of a system of old-age insurance. With certain caste's, female children are liabilities; but the male issues are proportionately iorc valuable as assets.
Among animals, offsprings do not possess material value. The purity of parental affection is therefore not spoilt by the sense of ownership. The children are not obliged to pay for parental care. Having no stake, so to say, on the life of their offsprings, animals are not anxious to have the feeling that they know all about the future of their investment. The father's duty ends with his meagrc, but essential, contribution for the fertilisation of the egg. Among men, the contribution is no greater. After that act, male animals are utterly unconcerned with the process of propagation they have initiated. They are no more concerned with their embryonic offspring than with its bearer. The two incentives for such concern, felt (more correctly, demonstrated) by would be fathers among men, are absent among animals. Man's concern for the pregnant mother and for the child in her womb is analogous to the concern of the peasant for the land he has sown and for the crop that he expects. The incentive for the
