wedlock and the merit of celibacy. The product of such inconsistency was necessarily base. Some parts of the literary record which remain to us would lead us to believe that the whole society was brutal and vicious, but when we think of the thousands of families who died without ever making a mark on the record we must believe that domestic virtue and happiness were usual and characteristic of the society. The best proof of this is presented by the efforts at reform throughout the fifteenth century and the vigor of the reformation of the sixteenth century. The hot disputes between Protestants and Catholics turned chiefly on the doctrine of the mass and on sacerdotal claims. but they contained also an element of dissatisfaction with inherited mores about marriage and the family. The Protestants denounced the abuses which had grown up around the monasteries and the gratuitous misery of celibacy. They, however, lost the old ideas about marriage and divorce and the Catholics denounced them for laxity and vice. At the Council of Trent, in 1563, the Catholics made a new law of marriage, in which they redefined and strengthened the ritual element. Out of all that strife and turmoil our modern family has come down to us. The churches and denominations are now trying to win something in their rivalry with each other by the position they adopt in regard to marriage and divorce and the family. The family in its best estate, now among us, is a thing which we may contemplate with the greatest satisfaction. When the parents are united by mutual respect and sincere affection and by joint zeal for the welfare of their children the family is a field of peace and affection in which the most valuable virtues take root and grow and character is built on the firmest foundation of habit. The family exists by tradition and old custom faithfully handed down. Our society, however, has never yet settled down to established order and firm tradition since the great convulsion of the sixteenth century. Perhaps the family still shows more fluctuation and uncertainty than any other of our great institutions. Different households now differ greatly in the firmness of parental authority and the inflexibility of filial obedience. Many nowadays have abandoned the old standards of proper authority and due obedience. The family has to a great extent lost its position as a conservative institution and has become a field for social change. This, however, is only a part of the decay of doctrines once thought most sound and the abandonment of standards once thought the definition of good order and stability. The changes in social and political philosophy have lowered the family. The family has not successfully resisted them. Part of the old function of the family seems to have passed to the primary school, but the school has not fully and intelligently taken up the functions thrown upon it. It appears that the family now depends chiefly on the virtue, good sense, conception of duty, and spirit of sacrifice of the parents. They have constantly new problems to meet. They want to do what is right and best. They do not fear change and do not shrink from it. So long as their own character is not corrupted it does not appear that there is any cause for alarm. L HOW HOME CONDITIONS REACT UPON THE FAMILY MRS. CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN Discussion of social processes, to be fruitful, must rest on some hypothesis as to the nature and purpose of society. It is here assumed that society is a life-form in course of evolution, that its processes are to be measured like those of other lifeforms, as they affect the three main issues of existence-being, reproduction, improvement. In so far as social processes are genetic they interest us as students and critics; in so far as they are telic they form the most practical and important subjects of study. The family has its origin in the genetic process of reproduction; but is modified continually by telic forces. In its present form it is an institution of confused values, based on vital necessity, but heavily encumbered with rudiments of earlier stages of development, some beneficent, some useless, some utterly mischievous; and showing also the thriving growth of new and admirable features. We must consider it first on its biological basis, as a, sexrelated group for the purpose of rearing young; and the effect of conditions upon it should be measured primarily by this purpose. Next we find in the existing family clear traces of that early long-dominant social unit, the woman-centered group of the matriarchate. Our universal and deep-seated reverence for the mother-governed home, with its peace, comfort, order, and goodwill, has survived many thousand years of patriarchal government, and refuses to be changed even by innumerable instances of discomfort, discord, waste, and unhappiness. Superimposed upon this first social group comes the establishment of the patriarchate, the family with the male head, based upon the assumption by the male of sole efficiency as trans mitter of life. In this form the family enters upon an entirely new phase, and includes purposes hitherto unknown. It becomes a vehicle of masculine power and pride-was indeed for long their sole vehicle: it produces its ethics, its codes of honor, its series of religions, its line of political development through tribe and clan, princedom and monarchy, its legal system in which all personal and property rights are vested in the man, and its physical expression in the household of servile women. It is from this period that we derive our popular impressions that the family is the unit of the state, that the man is the head of the house, and other supposedly self-evident propositions. The patriarchal family, even in its present reduced and modified form, is the vital core and continuing cause of our androcentric culture. Fourthly, we must view it as an industrial group of selfcentered economic activities, the birthplace of arts and crafts as well as of persons. While the natural origin of these industries is in maternal energy, the voluntary efforts of the mother being the real source of human production, yet the family, as an economic group in the modern sense, is also an androcentric institution. Besides the mother's work for her children, the patriarchal family required the service of the man by his women-a claim which has no parallel in nature. There is nothing in maternity, nothing in the natural relation of the sexes which should make the female the servant of the male.. This form of economic relationship was developed when the man learned to take advantage of the industrial value of the woman and added to his profitable group as many women as possible. Moreover, when the masculine instinct of sex-combat swelled and broadened, blended with the hunter's predatory appetite, organized, and became war, then in course of time male captives were compelled to labor as the price of life, and set to work in the only social group then existent. It is to this custom, to this remote and painful period, that our institution owes its present name. Not father, mother, nor child, but servant, christens the family. Further than this we find in our family group the development of a new relation, a new idea as yet but little understood, that which is vaguely expressed by the word marriage. Monogamy, the permanent union of one male and one female for reproductive purposes, is as natural a form of sex-relation as any other, common to many animals and birds, a resultant of continued and combined activities of both parents for the same end. This natural base of a true marriage should be carefully studied. Continued union in activity for a common purpose necessarily develops ease and pleasure in the relationship. The same couple can carry on these activities more easily than a new combination; hence monogamy. In our human family we find many forms: androgyny, polygyny, and then the slow and halting evolution of monogyny. Monogynous marriage should include sex-attraction, romantic love, and a high degree of comradeship. It is now our common race ideal, recognized as best for the advantage of the child and the individual happiness of the parent; also, through greater personal efficiency, for the good of society. This form of marriage is slowly evolving in the family, but is by no means invariably present. Lastly we must bear in mind that the family is our accepted basis of mere living; it, and its outward expression, the home, are so universally assumed to be the only natural form of existence, that to continue on earth outside of "a family," without "a home," is considered unnatural and almost immoral. In this regard the family must be studied as ministering to the health, comfort, happiness, and efficiency of adult individuals, quite aside from parental purposes, or those of marriage; as for instance in the position of adult sons and daughters, of aged persons no longer actively valuable as parents; or of coadjacent aunts, uncles, and cousins; as also in relation to the purely individual interests of members of the family proper. When we now take up our study of home conditions, we have definite ground from which to judge and to measure them. How do they react upon the family in regard to those three major purposes of life-being, reproduction, improvement? Do they best maintain human life? Do they best minister to the repro |