[2] It is said that the household does not readily form itself in very easy conditions of life.
We will not venture upon the history of phases of the family life, but will attempt at once to sketch its position and value in the typical civilisation of a modern State. Only it must be insisted on once more, [1] that the family or household as an ethical structure is not anterior to the State, but is rather a growth dependent on the spirit and protection of the State, and intentionally fostered by it as against forms of kinship which do less justice to the ethical possibilities of parentage.
As an ethical idea, then, the monogamous family, which is in the normal case also a household, has a unique place in the structure of the citizen mind.
Its peculiarity is in being a natural union of feeling with ideal purpose. That is to say, the ideal purpose, a permanent interest in a comparatively permanent and external life, attaches itself by imperceptible links to the most universal incident of animal existence. The mere remaining together of the units, a demand of their physical needs, is almost enough of itself to transform their inevitable { 301} mutual dependence into a relation of intentional service, rooted in affection, and tinged with some degree of forethought.
And, being thus “natural,” the idea of the family has a hold like no other upon the whole man. In this respect it anticipates the powers which have been claimed for the love of beauty. The very animal roots of life, and every detail of man’s appetitive being, are made, without conscious effort or moralising interference, factors in a round of social service. The meal of a lonely individual [1] is perhaps, at best, a refined and lawful pleasure. But the family meal, quite apart from over-strained religionism, has in it, as a plain matter of fact, the fundamental elements of a sacrament, none the less effective that they are not thought of by that name. And both through maintaining the fitness of the parents for their life work, and through the training of the children to the same end, the natural ethics of the family have an indispensable logical hold upon the more explicit common good known to the social will.
[1] Note, however, what is said below of the secondary or transferred idea of the family. The solitary may partake of the family sacrament, so to speak, “by faith.”