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.