In humanity, in some places and classes we do hold it sacred, however. Why? "Because it is the highest, sweetest, best thing we know!" will be eagerly answered. Is it--really? Is it better than Liberty, better than Justice, better than Art, Government, Science, Industry, Religion? How can that function which is common to savage, barbarian, peasant, to all kinds and classes, low and high, be nobler, sweeter, better, than those late-come, hard-won, slowly developed processes which make men greater, wiser, kinder, stronger from age to age?
The "sacred duties of maternity" reproduce the race, but they do nothing to improve it.
Is it not more sacred to teach right conduct for instance, as a true preacher does, than to feed one's own child as does the squaw? Grant that both are sacred--that all right processes are sacred--is not the relative sanctity up and out along the line of man's improvement?
Do we hold a wigwam more sacred than a beast's lair and less sacred than a modern home? If so, why? Do we hold an intelligent, capable mother more sacred than an ignorant, feeble one? Where are the limits and tendencies of these emotions?
The main basis of this home-sanctity idea is simply the historic record of our ancient religion of ancestor-worship. The home was once used as a church, as it yet is in China; and the odour of sanctity hangs round it still. The other basis is the equally old custom of sex-seclusion--the harem idea. This gives the feeling of mystery and "tabu," of "the forbidden"--a place shut and darkened--wholly private. A good, clean, healthy, modern home, with free people living and loving in it, is no more sacred than a schoolhouse. The schoolhouse represents a larger love, a higher function, a farther development for humanity. Let us revere, let us worship, but erect and open-eyed, the highest, not the lowest; the future, not the past!
Closely allied to our sense of home-sanctity and sprung from the same root, is our veneration for the old; either people or things; the "home of our ancestors" being if anything more sacred than our own, and the pot or plate or fiddle-back chair acquiring imputed sanctity by the simple flux of time. What time has to do with sanctity is not at first clear. Perhaps it is our natural respect for endurance. This thing has _lasted_, therefore it must be good; the longer it lasts the better it must be, let us revere it!