390 THE ASCENT OF MAN 



guards this method provides, it cannot be final, nor 

 can those nations rise to any exalted social height 

 or moral greatness till some change occurs. It has 

 been given especially to one nation to lead the world 

 in its assault upon this mistaken law, and to demon- 

 strate to mankind that in the unconstrained and 

 artless relations of youth lie higher safeguards than 

 the polite conventions of society can afford. The 

 people of America have proved that the blending 

 of the sweet currents of different family-lives in 

 social intercourse, in recreation, and — most original 

 of all — in education, can take place freely and joy- 

 ously without any sacrifice of man's reverence for 

 woman, or woman's reverence for herself ; and, 

 springing out of these naturally mingled lives, there 

 must more and more come those sacred and happy 

 homes which are the surest guarantees for the moral 

 progress of a nation. So long as the first concern 

 of a country is for its homes, it matters little what it 

 seeks second or third. Long before Evolution showed 

 its scientific interest in this first social aggregate, and 

 proclaimed it the strategic point in moral progress, 

 poetry, philosophy, and history assigned the same 

 great place to Family-life. The one point, indeed, 

 where all students of the past agree, where all pro- 

 phets of the future meet, where all the sciences from 

 biology to ethics are enthusiastically at one, is in 



