The familiar care and provident rearing of children constantly exercises the domestic virtues, tending directly to the perfection of manhood and womanhood. The responsibility and difficulty are of the gravest. The culture should be dominated by the view that, in the order of nature, the child is destined to moral independence, and to membership in society. In being prepared for this, it has many and very sacred rights. Its parents are bound, as their function in the family organism, to provide for its healthful maintenance suitable to their rank in society, for its education, intellectual, moral and religious, and, in general, for its present and prospective welfare. Great laxity of restraint is likely to be ruinous; but, on the other hand, severe restrictions, a rigid molding of character, opinions, and religious creed, is hardly less to be deprecated as an injurious trespass on the right of the child to generous culture, and the free growth of its individuality.1

The office of brothers and sisters in this organic relation is affectionate sympathy, and mutual helpfulness, which should extend throughout life. As sons and daughters they are bound to honor father and mother by a willing and pleased obedience to their rightful authority, and by a prompt readiness to promote their welfare. Also they are bound to guard sedulously the honor of the family name, and to seek actively the advancement of the common interest. leben. Come, let us live for, with and in our children. Then will the life of our children bring us peace and joy, then shall we begin to grow wise, to be wise." - Education of Man, § 42.

1 "The feeling of community, first uniting a child with its mother, father, brothers and sisters, and resting on a higher spiritual unity, to which later is added the unmistakable discovery that father, mother, brothers, sisters, human beings in general, feel and know themselves to be in community and unity with a higher principle, with humanity, with God-this feeling of community is the very first germ, the very first beginning of all true religious spirit, of all genuine yearning for unhindered unification with the Eternal, with God."- Idem, § 21.

§ 118. This human institution, the family, is preeminently natural, being physically determined. Those born into it are involuntarily and inseparably its members. By its primacy it stands as the unit of society and of the State, without derogation from the distinct personality, moral status and obligation of its individual members. Yet it is a whole. Even when some part or parts are lacking, it is still a unit. It is not a logical whole, a genus, for its parts are not species or kinds of family. It is an integral whole; not collective, as a cluster of grapes, but organic, as a flower whose central organs, stamen and pistil, yield germ and seed, within a corolla. It is an individual, indivisible in itself, and separate from every other.

Less clear perhaps, but not less true, is it that a family is a single personality. The definition of a person is a being conscious of obligation. Now there is a consciousness common to all members of a family, an intelligent apprehension of moral law which is the same in each, a judgment which, under the influence of common interest, is assimilated into one, a pervading sentiment, a united impulse to effectuate a single will. The obligation of some one family as an organic whole to some one man as its benefactor, or to some other family, or to general society, is matter of familiar speech and acknowledgment, and the common consciousness of such obligation constitutes its unique personality, quite distinguishable from the peculiar personality of its several members. To this conception of its distinct personality may be added the possession of family traits in features, manners, customs, habits, and in general, of character, often sharply marked. Moreover, what wounds one member, wounds all; the honor, dignity and welfare of the whole, is in common keeping.1

1 This moral solidarity is not a product of refined civilization. In rude, primitive ages it found abundant recognition; for example, in the infliction

§ 119. The individual personality of a family as an organized unit, distinct from the personality of its members, is manifest in the significant fact that it claims a life beyond the present generation. Its ancestry extending back for ages is its pride, and its posterity in an indefinite future is its hope. What it has been confers titles of honor, and what it may become excites anxious solicitude. The death of a member breaks in upon its present entirety, but does not interrupt its continuity. Only by sterility and death combined is it extinguished, and this is accounted a special loss to society, a public and private misfortune.1

A family of the present generation, inheriting the honor and wealth of the same family in preceding generations, recognizes its moral obligation to maintain and rightly use the trust, thus discharging a sacred debt due the dead. Also it recognizes its moral obligation to the coming generation in provision for its welfare, thus discharging a sacred debt due descendants, including those yet unborn. That one is thus bound to pay debts due the deceased and the unborn, is not fanciful sentiment, nor figurative speech, but real, literal ethics. Current expressions and approved literature recognize in many ways the obligation as especially incumbent on of punishment due to the offense of a single member upon the whole of his family; the guilt of one, it was held, making all alike guilty. This lingers with us in the social ostracism of an innocent member of a dishonored or disreputable family. Put merit for guilt, gratitude and love for vengeance, and we have a law of the moral order holding good for all time, for the highest civilization, for the most refined moral consciousness.

1 Witness the deification and worship of ancestry, so common among heathen peoples, ancient and modern. The law of primogeniture in England, and in most of the States of Europe, by which, the father dying intestate, his eldest son inherits the real estate, i.e. lands and buildings, in preference to and in exclusion of all other members of the family, clearly intends to confirm its continuity. So also the practice of entail. The preference in inheritance of males to females, found in ancient Jewish, Athenian (but not in Roman) law, and in the laws of some modern States, e.g. the Salic law, likewise was apparently intended to perpetuate more distinctly the family.

the family, whose individuality and personality extend through generations that come and go, yet perpetuate its organic unity.

§ 120. The foregoing considerations enable us to understand more clearly the ethical principles that regulate the holding and disposing of property.1

Property owned by either party at time of marriage, and that acquired afterward, is, by virtue of the marriage, the common property of the family. That either husband or wife should have property at disposal apart from and independently of the other, though often it is so arranged, contradicts the unity of the relation, drawing a line of separation and making a distinction that ought never to exist. Such an arrangement is inconsistent with that entire surrender of all the interests of life into the common keeping which the marriage bond requires; and in so far the marriage is but partial. The reserve implies a distrust that is chilling, and likely to produce a discord that is fatal. It is a withholding trespass.

Evidently, then, the family property should not be largely ventured in trade, or otherwise disposed of, without the free consent of all members, including the children, in whom also property rights are vested by birth, when they become sufficiently mature to appreciate and rightly judge the interests involved. Yet, be it remembered, that each and all should seek, by a reasonable yielding, to assimilate their views and wishes, thereby attaining a unity of will which thus becomes the will of the family.

Also it is evident that the management of the family property in detail must be left to some one member. This seems naturally to devolve upon the husband and father who, according to the usual and approved order, takes charge of

1 See supra, § 38.

the family interests outside of home, and hence is best acquainted with public affairs. Because property is held and ordinary business transacted in his name, he is apt to regard himself as exclusive and irresponsible owner. This error, pervading society, stands greatly in need of correction.1

§ 121. Distribution by testament of the property of a family is, for like reasons, by the hand and in the name of its ostensible head; also for the reason that, preparatory to his decease, when the house band is loosed, and the family disintegrated, there is need of a special and provisory adjustment of property rights by the one to whom their care has been chiefly committed. In any such adjustment the united consensus of all members should be had, so that together with the avoidance of any actual trespass, complaint of wrong may also be forestalled.

Testamentary distribution gives rise to many difficult questions which largely occupy the courts. The fundamental principles involved are, however, sufficiently clear. A producer has a right to use and dispose of his products at will, and this will must be effective beyond his decease, else a great incentive to industry and accumulation would be lost, projects for the benefit of the coming generation would not be devised and driven, and social progress would be hindered, inasmuch as each generation would have to make a new beginning. But let it be observed that the home management and industry, its provision for rest and refreshment, its cheering influence, its trifling comforts even, are very important elements in the efficiency of the producer, and thereby enter

1 In the United States, when the head of a family dies intestate, distribution to the survivors, is made of the property according to civil statute, and guardians of minors are appointed. There are differences, but the existence in any form of such statutes is a distinct recognition by the State that property rights in what was an undivided possession inhere in each member of a disrupted family.