CHAPTER XXII 



FAMILY RESPONSIBILITY 



Thus far the pages of this book have made it plain that 

 throughout life there runs the great fact of sex, and that, 

 because of sex, life on the earth is able to go on from one 

 generation to another. 



In human evolution, however, man has crowned all indi- 

 vidual relations with the family relation. He has made this 

 smallest group of human beings — parents and their children, 

 with their home life — the center of his civilization. With- 

 out the family we should have no government, no commerce, 

 no art of any sort. 



More than this, the environment supplied by each family 

 in each home shapes and changes, for better or for worse, 

 all who live in that home. 



And because the family is so important to the human race, 

 because it concerns each one of us so vitally, also because, to 

 a large extent, we individually determine what kind of homes 

 we shall have, therefore such a book as this must take the 

 laws of family health into serious account. 



Let us not forget that any disease which travels from per- 

 son to person moves surest and swiftest among the members 

 of the family circle. 



When scarlet fever or smallpox, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, 

 whooping cough, diphtheria, or measles breaks out in any 

 home, the members of the family itself are in more danger 

 than other people, because they live closest together. 



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