Cohabitation

“ The need for constant continued care was probably a chief means in transforming temporary cohabitations into permanent unions. It certainly was a chief influence in forming habits of affectionate and sympathetic watchfulness; that constructive interest in the well-being of others which is essential to associated life. ”

“ Fitness of circumstances, means, and age should be also considered. Am I able to support a family? Can I discharge the duties of a household? Where there is ignorance of household duties, indolence, the want of any visible means of supporting a family, no trade, no education, no energy, and no prospects, there is no reason to think there can be a proper marriage. Thus, then, mutual love, adaptation of character, of means, of circumstances, of position, and of age, should be considered, in the formation of a marriage alliance. ”

“ But the beauty of a household consists in the conjunction of man and wife who are united to each other by destiny, are consociated to the gods who preside over nuptials, births, and houses; and who accord, indeed, with each other, and have all things in common as far as to their bodies, or rather their souls themselves;—who exercise a becoming authority over their house and servants, are properly solicitous about the education of their children and pay an attention to the necessaries of life, which is neither expensive nor negligent, but moderate and appropriate. ”

“ Recognizing the fact that if we are fully to understand the higher forms of the family we must trace them up from those lowest forms accompanying the lowest social state, we saw how, in a small separated group of persons old and young, held together by some kinship, there was, under the circumstances of pastoral life, an establishing of male descent, an increasing of cohesion, of subordination, of coöperation, industrial and defensive ”

“ The husband and wife make the Home: the Home is the Gibraltar of organized civilization; and the children are Posterity, in its beginning. Thus marriage, the home, and the children are the conservators of Society. ”

“ It is not merely a place to eat and sleep; any boarding-house can provide that. The ideal home is a community of congenial spirits, a place of inspiration, comfort, rest of spirit as well as of body. Here dwell together two who have chosen each other as comrades in the complex problem of living, to share their fare, their mirth, their troubles, to give cheer in distress, encouragement in struggle, ambition for achievement, sympathy in trial and happiness, friendly criticism to refine; and to coöperate in their mutual desire, responsibility, joys, and trials of rearing a family. ”

“ Shall every man count his neighbour’s house as his own, and live together as one family?
“No; though the Earth and Storehouses be common to every Family, yet every Family shall live apart as they do; and every man’s house, wife, children and furniture for ornament of his house, or anything he hath fetched in from the Storehouses, or provided for the necessary use of his family, is all a propriety unto that Family, for the peace thereof. ”

“ So of the nation in miniature, the family; the struggling families at ‘the back,’ the orphanage, the mission, the necessitous of our acquaintance, are they not for the sustenance of the family in the higher life?
But it is not enough that the family commune maintain neighbourly relations with other such communes, and towards the stranger within the gates. The family is the unit of the nation; and the nation is an organic whole, a living body, built up, like the natural body, of an infinite number of living organisms. ”

“ Such a view of the value of the individual and of the importance of the family relation leads logically to the conception of the obligation of the individual who accepts the privileges of the family relation so to adjust his life to the lives of the other members of his family group as to preserve their individual freedom, and to coöperate with them in the effort so to adjust the group to the social order as not to interfere with the freedom of other individuals to enter into and to maintain the family relation. ”

“ Thus we have as a first or simplest community the family, next the village, then the full or perfect state, which, seeking to realise an absolute self-sufficiency within itself, rises from mere living to well-living as an aim of existence. ”

“ It is that unitive power which arises out of the manifold relations and associations of domestic life. The specific influences of husband and wife, of parent and child, of brother and sister, of teacher and pupil, united and harmoniously blended, constitute the home-influence. ”

“ They apply to larger partnerships the same attractions that draw and bind together pairs in the worldly partnership of marriage. A Community home in which each is married to all, and where love is honored and cultivated, will be as much more attractive than an ordinary home, as the Community out-numbers a pair. 2. These principles remove the principal obstructions in the way of Association. There is plenty of tendency to crossing love and adultery, even in the system of isolated households. Association increases this tendency. ”

“ A BALLAD OF EUGENICS
“Our modern monogamous family represents the survival of religious, ethical, economic, and legal elements from all the intermingling streams which unite to form civilization.”—Edward Devins. ”

“ If we are so fortunate as to carry one family through a disorder, which is the plague among these people, I trust to the force of example, we shall then become truly necessary, valued, and beloved; we indeed owe every kind office to a society of men who so readily offer to assist us into their social partnership, and to extend to my family the shelter of their village, the strength of their adoption, and even the dignity of their names. ”

“ It used to be true in our cities that every family occupied a separate house of its own, that every family had its own little premises, that every family was separated in its life from every other family. ”

“ There may, perhaps, also be obscure workmen, or humble citizens—perhaps, also, alas! great criminals.
“‘However, this may be, my most earnest desire is that my descendants should combine together, and, reconstituting one family, by a close and sincere union, put into practice the divine words of Christ, “Love ye one another.”
“‘This union would have a salutary tendency; for it seems to me that upon union, upon the association of men together, must depend the future happiness of mankind. ”

“ From what country did each of these people come?
Here they are all living together, people from all over the great wide world. Our homes stand side by side. We work and play together. Truly we are brothers and sisters, for we are all children in the great human family. It matters not from what distant land our people may have come, we should all be bound together like one family by human love and kindness. ”

“ This organization which the pastoral group gets by being at once family and society, and which is gradually perfected by conflict and survival of the fittest, it carries into settled life. But settled life entails multiplication into numerous such groups adjacent to one another ”

“ So in my fanciful moments I have imagined may society be, when the two great branches of humanity's noblest family, which have been separated so long, will consent not only to meet, but to meet on the same ground ”

“ Society is made up of various units, lending to one another support by the mutual participation in the activities of life. The family—the first in order of time and dignity—is beyond doubt the principal and central unit. ”

“ With such a partner the house will prosper. The household is improved by it. The husband and wife, separated by their occupations during the day, are the better pleased to unite together in common thought. ”

“ The importance of the family, as the divinely instituted social monad, depends manifestly on the happy combination and harmonious blending of authority and love which grow out of its constitution—two elements with the full development and true balance of which the well-being and happiness of all societies is intimately bound up. ”

“ The family, too, though so kind and hospitable, had that consciousness of unity among themselves, and separation from the world at large, which, in every domestic circle, should still keep a holy place where no stranger may intrude. ”

“ For you are fully aware, Venerable Brothers, that the governing principle of family life has, in accordance with the requirements of natural law, its basis in the indissoluble union of husband and wife, and its superstructure in the duties and rights of parents and children, and of masters and servants towards each other. ”

“ Here is indeed a gathering of scattered kinsfolk, but it is no gathering of dependencies round a common mistress or even round a common mother. It is the picture of something nobler; the picture of scattered communities, free and equal, gathered together in a common home and rejoicing in the tie of common brotherhood. ”

“ And it is the duty of those especially who live in the same vicinity and family thus to comfort and edify one another; and this is the best neighbourhood, the best means to answer the end of society. Such as are nearly related together and have affection for one another, as they have the greatest opportunity, so they are under the greatest obligation, to do this kindness one to another. ”

“ You see the world all awry, and are consumed with a desire to set it right. Must you go on a mission to the heathen? Very well, but learn to keep house first. Begin reform, where all true reform must begin, at the centre and work outwards; at the foundation and work upwards. What is the basis and centre of all earthly life? It is the family, the home ”

“ The object and end of Association in all its forms, as we have frequently said, is to gather men, women and children into larger and more permanent HOMES than those established by marriage. The advantages of partnership, incorporation and coöperation have become so manifest in modern affairs, that an unspeakable longing has arisen in the very heart of civilization for the extension of those advantages to the dearest of all human interests—family affairs—the business of home. ”

“ And that there should be intelligent agreement, a community of thought and feeling, on all matters of importance, is surely the first necessity for the healthy and harmonious development of family life. ”

“ I have found that those whose love is deepest and warmest represent families who look at everything in the world from the standpoint of the household—who judge of preaching, of ethics, and of methods by the relation which they bear to the bringing up of the young, and to the founding and maintaining of Christian homes. That part of the community who live in the household, and honor it, I had almost said, were universally my most dear and cordial friends. ”

“ I begin with the question whether the classificatory system of relationship provides us with any evidence that mankind once possessed a form of social organisation, or rather such an absence of social organisation, as would accompany a condition of general promiscuity in which, if one can speak of marriage at all, marriage was practised between all and any members of the community, including brothers and sisters. ”

“ By the physical idea of home, we mean, not only its outward, mechanical structure, made up of different parts and members, but that living whole or oneness into which these parts are bound up. Hence it is not merely adventitious,—a corporation of individual interests, but that organic unity of natural life and interest in which the members are bound up. By the moral idea of home, we mean the union of the moral life and interests of its members. ”

“ Of course marriage was a relationship which was controlled and adjusted by the family ideas. From the folkways as to kinship all the simplest conceptions of societal rights and duties were derived, societal institutions were constructed, and societal organization has grown up. ”

“ I can but look with some degree of solicitude on the effect on civilization and on the home, of palatial hotels, and great school buildings, filled with heterogeneous masses of children, in which love, solicitude and sacrifices, each for all, have little opportunity for growth and development. The family seems to be the sacred unit of civilization and morality. ”

“ Here we find most marked the personal affection, the intimate companionship, the community of interests, the common responsibility and care for the children, which are the characteristics of the family. The related life of the group so formed constitutes domestic life. ”

“ No doubt, however, marriage and the home will undergo modifications, which will tend to make these ancient institutions a little more flexible and to permit a greater degree of variation to meet special circumstances. We can occupy ourselves with no more essential task, whether as regards ourselves or the race, than to make more beautiful the House of Life for the dwelling of Love. ”

“ We find ourselves in presence of two opinions or theories—one in favour of unity, the other of duality.
The first, the most ancient and widespread, derives social life from domestic life. The family is the social molecule: by its increase are formed aggregates of a more or less complex character, whose life in common creates a solidarity and an exchange of services—i.e., the conditions of a community. ”

“ We say, at least equal rights; for inasmuch as the domestic household is antecedent, as well in idea as in fact, to the gathering of men into a community, the family must necessarily have rights and duties which are prior to those of the Community, and founded more immediately in nature. ”

“ He lives in a village or neighborhood, which is hardly more than a great patriarchal family, closely united by intermarriage, and by the pressure of common work to satisfy common needs, common ownership of the soil, mutual aid in hard times. ”

“ There are three forms of social grouping: the Family, House-mates, and Place-mates. (1) The family consists of a man, his wife or wives, their children and adopted children; widows and their children may be adopted, but the woman retains her own fireplace. ”