THE PRIMARY SOCIAL SETTLEMENT. 535 



be superseded by that of fathers and mothers, and, finally, by that of 

 the whole family. It is in the air that the family, the home end of 

 the social problem — the primary social settlement, if you please — is 

 to have a renaissance, a new birth. Twenty-five years ago Charles 

 Dudley Warner feared that with the going out of the hearthstone 

 and the hearth fire, with its big aromatic back log of hickory, the 

 family would go. It has not gone, but it has suffered neglect and 

 decay to the extent that, like a smoldering fire, it needs new fuel and 

 a big bellows to blow the embers into healthy life and warmth, to 

 create a family atmosphere and make it contagious. 



Because the disintegration of the family is threatened, because 

 its decline is asserted, because family life in America has become a 

 target for some foreigners to shoot unpleasant remarks at, there is no 

 reason to take a pessimistic view, but rather to believe that family 

 extremes have met, that the family pendulum has swung either way 

 as far as it can, and will, according to the law of rhythm and reason, 

 swing back to middle ground, to reorganization, resetting, reinte- 

 gration. 



It is incongruous in a country widely reputed for its homes 

 that the house should be better than its inmates, the container of 

 more account than the thing contained. To this end public opin- 

 ion, that mighty factor in all forces, including social, needs to be 

 aroused. The general thinking and reading public is not yet awake 

 to the family idea. I know of no practical and pertinent sub- 

 ject that there is such a dearth of literature on as on family 

 life, of more importance in the history of nations and in the his- 

 tory of the world than any other one thing. I know of but one 

 entire book * on the subject, and that was published ten years 

 ago, and discusses the family historically more than ethically and 

 sociologically. There are, however, chapters in several books that 

 treat of the family in a scientific way. Our government, in the in- 

 terest of science, sends out expeditionists to discover the north 

 pole. For the sake of humanity as well as sociology, which " is 

 nothing but systematic knowledge of human beings, who have always 

 been commonplace and at the same time mysterious," it has become 

 necessary for expert observers to discover or rediscover the family, 

 and for the family to discover itself as microscopic society, and espe- 

 cially as the prototype of the nation. The old-time classification of 

 social institutions into family, church, and state, with the family as 

 the unit of society, and society the aggregation of families, has been 

 somewhat changed. The individual is now the unit of society, and 

 in some quarters of Germany and this country there is added a fourth 



* The Family. By Dr. Thwing. 



