INFLUENCE OF FAMILY LIFE 211 



married, man with cliildren has a sense of responsibility which 

 the married man without children has not and cannot have. 

 The duty of bringing up and providing for offspring, the hope 

 and consolation which offspring bring, produce an integration 

 of the family life which would otherwise be necessarily absent. 

 Men marry in order to found a family ; the founding of a family 

 is the aim and raison-d^ Hre of the institution of marriage ; and 

 if this aim is not realised, the influence of married life on the 

 individual cannot but be reduced in a corresponding measure. 

 We are thus justified in our phraseology. It is not marriage 

 which can be said to afEord palpable protection against suicide, 

 but family life. The man who is conscious of his responsibility 

 towards his offspring ; who, in return for the efiorts made by 

 him on their behalf, is rendered supremely happy by them ; 

 who<ds encouraged in hours of discouragement by the knowledge 

 that he is working for a real object which transcends his indi- 

 viduaUty, and which is capable, in consequence, of giving that 

 individuality a value which it could not otherwise possess ; 

 whose faith in life in general is strengthened by his faith in the 

 destinies of his children ; and whose courage is continually 

 sustained by the hope that these children will achieve what he 

 has had no time to achieve ; who is consoled, as the years roll 

 on, by the knowledge that his life is not extinguished with the 

 passing of his individual self, but that his children constitute 

 a prolongation of his individual life beyond the limits of his 

 own personality — this man will no longer be alone. He will 

 form but part of a whole which is greater than he is^ a whole 

 which envelops his individual self, which reminds him, at every 

 moment, ahke of the responsibilities and of the rewards which 

 his membership of this larger whole brings with it. And such 

 a man will be less liable to commit suicide than the man who 

 is not thus integrated in a larger whole, who lacks, consequently, 

 the motives for living which a father of a family possesses. 

 We may, therefore, formulate the following proposition : The 



14—2 



