CHAPTER II

THE FAMILY

The family is in process of change. We should fix attention on the kind of change that is desirable. The change desirable is the more perfect expression of the ethical ideal in the life of the family. One striking fact is that in the past the family was never supposed to exist merely for the “benefit” of its individual members. The latter view is an individualistic novelty of our age, and, as commonly understood, it is radically false.

Under the caste system the family subordinates the welfare of its members to the function of the caste. Society being stationary and stratified, the family is the organ for the reproduction of a stratified social system.

A similar view prevails under feudalism. We of today resent the idea underlying primogeniture. From the modern point of view we ask why the eldest born should be preferred to his brothers. Primogeniture appears to us to assert the inequality of individual men; but from the feudal point of view the eldest born was preferred, not as an individual, but as the steward of the family property. The family had a fixed place in the social hierarchy, and to maintain this place the estate was to remain undivided in the hands of one person.

Now what is amiss with the modern family? This is profoundly amiss—that the idea of the family as serving a larger purpose is disappearing, and that the family is supposed to exist for the benefit of its individual members, benefit meaning happiness. Frequent divorce and disintegration are the natural consequences of this view, for if the tie exists solely for the happiness of those bound by it, then it ought indeed to be dissolved when the relation entails suffering.

Society has passed from status to contract, and many seem to hold that contract is the last word, the true expression of freedom. We have passed from status to contract, we must pass on from contract to organization, and thus to true freedom.

Status is based on the analogy of the animal organism. The caste society and the feudal society, ethically regarded, are spurious organisms. This spurious type of organization is no longer viable, and now bald individualism is taking its place. The malady with which the family is afflicted is individualism. The desirable change is genuine organization on the basis of the spiritual equivalence of all functions.[72] The relation of the family to the general social task of organization is two-fold. The family is the seminary in which shall be implanted the germinal principle of organization, that principle which is destined to transform all the subsequent terms of the social series, the instrumentality to be employed being the three-fold reverence. Again, the family will reach its more perfect form in proportion as the succeeding social institutions, the school, vocation, state, shall themselves be essentially organized, the influence of the later terms retroacting on the first term.

The family, in the spiritual view of it which I am sketching, differs from the family of other days, and also from the modern family, in two particulars. It does not recruit some one social class or stratum. It does not direct the offspring into a single specific vocation. It is the vestibule that leads into all the different professions and vocations. And secondly, the family does not prepare the young to enter into a vocation for the purpose of securing happiness. It does not regard the vocation as servile to the empirical ends of the individual, but as a phase through which he is to pass on the road toward ethical personality, the fulfilment of the objective aims of the vocation being the means of acquiring the ethical development which the vocation is competent to furnish. Thus we regain, but on a much higher plane, what the family possessed before it began to break down under the influence of modern individualism, namely, an ulterior greater purpose imbedded within itself and yet extending beyond itself.

When we have grasped this relation of the family to the subsequent terms of the social series, and bear constantly in mind as we should that the three-fold reverence is the instrument by which _organization_ is to be effected, we shall then be able to give adequate reasons why the monogamic ideal alone is the true ethical ideal, why the marriage relation, if it is to be ethical, must be permanent between two and exclusive of all others.

Let me briefly point out the relation of the monogamic family to the three types of reverence. The third type ranks highest. The tie of consanguinity between parents and offspring supplies the empirical substratum. To be interested in the undeveloped, to surmise possibilities as yet wholly unapparent, to go to infinite pains to nurture and educate an immature being like a child, for all this natural affection is almost indispensable. As a rule no one can so love a child as its own parents do. The plan of state education for infants to replace home education is advocated by some on the ground that professional kindergartners and teachers are more competent to train the budding human mind than unpedagogical fathers and mothers. The function to be performed by the scientific educator in co-operation with the home is doubtless not to be missed; but taking children away from under the care of their parents, assembling them in what would be equivalent to state orphan asylums, is a procedure which precisely for pedagogical reasons would be preposterous. For the parent supplies that concentrated love for the individual child, that intimate cherishing which the most generous teacher, whose affections are necessarily distributed over many, can never give. And the child needs this selective affection. The love of the parent is the warm nest for the fledgling spirit of the child. To be at home in this strange world the young being with no claims as yet on the score of usefulness to society or of merit of any kind, must find somewhere a place where it is welcomed without regard to usefulness or merit. And it is the love of the parents that makes the home, and it is his own home that makes the child at home in the world.

It does not follow that parents in general do reverence the spiritual possibilities latent in their children. The natural affection is there, but the empirical substratum and the spiritual relation are not to be confounded. The kind of reverence of which I speak is an ideal thing to be worked towards, not something that as yet actually exists, save in exceptional cases. In the caste family and the feudal family the father incarnated, as it were, the social system so far as that stratum or class was concerned to which he belonged. He inspired awe. He demanded implicit obedience. It was the existing social system that spoke from his lips. But this system itself had an arbitrary character, and the worship of the father was hardly ethical. The modern family goes to the opposite extreme. In it the relations between parents and children are loose, and tend to become more and more so. Reverence is scarcely looked for by the parent, and is not likely to be accorded. On the individualistic theory the child at a very early age is treated as an equal, and whether encouraged to do so or not is apt to assert its independence. The members of the family are not joined in an organic connection, but resemble a collection of atomic units that easily fall apart. The ethical relation, the real reverence must spring from the service the parent renders in bringing to light the specific individuality of the child with an eye to the transmutation which it is to receive in the later terms of the social series. Not only highest gratitude but genuine reverence are due to the parent who performs this office. “You have given me physical birth, you are now giving me spiritual birth,” will be the child’s response to the parent’s efforts.

Thus much may be said as to the reason why the marriage relation should be exclusive. The principal reason why it should be lifelong, is that the office of the parent in furthering the spiritual development of the children does not end when they reach the threshold of manhood or womanhood. On the contrary, the finest touches are often added to the work of education when the sons and daughters have become established in a business or profession, and have founded families of their own. The wisdom gathered from the experience of their elders, the disinterested counsel inspired by love, will then be of the greatest use to them. The young mother, especially, confronted with the problems of child-rearing, will naturally turn to her own mother for advice. The son, who comes to close quarters with the difficulties of life, will find in the father, who is detached from life and has the tranquil vision of old age, his best friend.

In speaking of the third type of reverence I have already included all that need here be said of the first type. The reverential relation is mutual. The child will truly reverence the parent who on his side reverences the child’s spiritual possibilities. The child does not understand the word Spiritual, but is unconsciously affected by the thing itself which I am here describing. A person who has the vision, who has the gift of divining what is as yet unmanifested, will convey to others the illumination of his vision. The child will realize in his parent the presence of something higher, and will revere it, worship it. Certain looks, certain expressions of the countenance, certain gestures, though not understood in their meaning at the time, will be imprinted on memory to be recalled in later life and then understood. But it is essential, in order to evoke reverence in the young, to have it oneself. He who does not steadfastly revere something, yes, someone greater than himself, will never elicit reverence in others.

The second type of reverence, towards those who are unlike ourselves but none the less our equals, can be inculcated in an elementary way in the family through the relations of brothers and sisters. Fraternal feeling is an empirical means whereby to produce or at least prepare the way for a very notable spiritual result—the willingness not only to respect difference in others, but to welcome it. In current teaching the emphasis in fraternity is placed on likeness. It should rather be placed on the unlikeness. These exist, and are sometimes very marked between brothers, and often cause discord and separation. The novices in life should therefore be taught betimes to overcome their repugnance to those who are unlike themselves, and the common relation of the brothers to their parents will be helpful to this end. Naturally we dislike the unlike. Alienness is ever productive of disharmony. The fact, however, that the unlike person in the case of a brother is the child of the same parents draws us powerfully toward him despite the tendency to recoil.

I must not omit to mention that the triple reverence is most naturally and easily learned in the family, because of the simplicity of the relations, and the limited number of persons involved.

The question may be raised whether the single family should remain the primary social unit, or whether a group of families united in close coöperation would better fulfil the purposes for which the family exists. The privacy and separateness of each family would not need to be disturbed, coöperation might be limited to specific objects, such as simplifying the work of the household, providing kindergarten education for the young children, better play facilities, separate study rooms for adolescents, common entertainments for all, and a service of song at the beginning or close of the day. One obvious difficulty in constituting such a group would be: the diversities of tastes and opinions, particularly such as are not perceived at the outset, but emerge on nearer acquaintance, and as the younger members grow up and develop their idiosyncrasies. One great advantage, however, would result if care were taken to include in the group persons belonging to different vocations—scientist, scholar, architect, lawyer, artist. Young persons as they mature would then have the benefit of contact with those who are intimately familiar with different lines of vocational activity, and would be helped to know their own mind as to their future career better than they commonly do now. Personal contact with one who is engaged in a certain line of work is a far better instruction as to the nature of the work than reading about it or observation from a distance.

The ethical theory of marriage has been developed in my published addresses.[73] But certain topics not there treated I would at least allude to here in passing, and among them the need of a more careful study of the causes that lead to infelicity in marriage. Kant mentions, as an instance of the discrepancy between the natural and the moral order, the fact that the sex passion is often at its height before the period when marriage may be wisely entered into. There are other seemingly radical incongruities, for instance, that between the face, the features of a person and his real character. The one may be borrowed so to speak from some ancestor, while the real nature is quite at variance with the impression created by the face, so that one who thinks he marries A really marries B. There are diversities also between partners in marriage that only show themselves in the latter part of life, when the outlines of character are apt to stand forth bare. Besides, there is assumed to be, by some modern writers, a certain fundamental sex antagonism.

The whole question of the characteristics of sex requires to be far more carefully investigated than it has been. And here let me take the opportunity to express my positive appreciation of empirical science in connection with ethical theory. The chief object of this volume is to work out the general plan of the ethical relations, or the regulative principle in ethics, and this I am deeply convinced is supersensible and non-empirical. Applied ethics, however, is dependent not only on the regulative principle but on empirical science, that is, on an extended and ever-increasing knowledge of physiology, psychology, and of the environmental conditions that influence human beings, and I am keenly desirous to ward off the possible misunderstanding that the ethical theory here proposed is intended to replace the empirical science of man, individual or social

Without the way there is no going. Without the truth there is no knowing;

says Thomas à Kempis. The way is the empirical knowledge, the truth is the regulative principle. The way itself, as we proceed along it, will shed additional light on the truth. Nevertheless, without the outlines of the truth, without a goal in view, we should but be wandering blindly.

It is likely that the relations between persons in marriage will in future become more complex, and the difficulties of adjustment more serious, in proportion as under the influence of the new education the individualities of men and women become more developed. Problems hardly as yet envisaged will then become pressing. But whatever the difficulties, they can be overcome if the ideal purpose of marriage be kept in view, namely, that two beings of opposite sexes shall spend their lives in the spiritual reproduction of offspring. The relation is triangular. Husband and wife are each to elicit the distinctive best in the other, incited, impelled to do so in order jointly to evoke the distinctive best in the young. And the young represent posterity. What the parents do for their own children they do for posterity, since children are that portion of posterity which comes under their immediate influence. And in this sense it may be said that marriage is an organ for the spiritual reproduction and advancement of the human race.

FOOTNOTES:

[72] Spurious or bastard organization was based on the empirical preëminence of some function like that of the priest or the warrior.

[73] See _Marriage and Divorce_, D. Appleton & Co.