s a closely compact body: so interwoven
is life with life that if one member suffer the other members suffer
with it. Breaches of moral order are not individual matters but social.
This truth is implied in society's constantly asserted right to regulate
family relations in the general interest even after it has ceased to
think of such relations as having any spiritual significance. We need
to-day a more vivid sense of the _community_ lest we shall see all sense
of a common life engulfed in the rising tide of individual anarchism. We
need the assertion in energetic form of the right of the community as
supreme over the right of the individual. We must deny the right of the
individual to pursue his own way and his own pleasure at the expense of
the rights of others. And to his insolent question, "Why should I suffer
in an intolerable situation?" we must plainly answer: "Because you are
responsible for the situation, and it is intolerable that you should be
permitted to throw off the results of your wickedness or your stupidity
upon other and innocent people."

And it is quite clear that should society assert its pre-eminent right
in unmistakable form and make it evident that it does not propose to
tolerate the results of the egotistic nonsense of self-determination and
the right of every one to live his own life, the evils of divorce and of
shattered families would presently shrink to relatively small
proportions. The present facility of divorce encourages thoughtless and
unsuitable marriages in the first place; and in the second place,
encourages the resort to divorce in circumstances of family disturbance
which would speedily right themselves in the present as they have done
in the past if those concerned knew that their happiness and comfort
for years compelled an adjustment of life. When as at present any one
who loses his temper can rush off to a court and get a marriage
dissolved for some quite trivial reason, there is small encouragement to
practice self-control. If a man and woman know that the consequences of
conduct must be faced by them, and cannot be avoided by thrusting them
upon others, they will no doubt in the course of time learn to exercise
a little self-control.

The family is the foundation of the state because, among other things,
it is the natural training place of citizens: no public training in
schools and camps can for a moment safely be looked to as a substitute
or an equivalent of wholesome fam