| Show A Henry James heroine observed that a great many of her personal friends were Family not known to her mother She was a representative rep-resentative of the times For our contemporaries Group I contem-poraries do not make friends by families Willm nor go out by families nor think by fami Will 1 lies nor even catami sleep by families It Pass takes an older fashioned civilization for that They do it in Germany to a degree And in India they do it to a greater degree with patriarchal households of several By ADA MAY KBECEER generations gen-erations There arc no individuals in such case only groups The family nets as a unit under the fathers guiding hand But the newer idea is for the members of the family group to declare themselves as individuals They vindicate individuality in the heart of our current collectivism For trjie t enough while there is much making for sociality in our modern notions and institutions in-stitutions and customs beneath all is the rise of the individual Our democracy is making individuals The rise of the masses is the birth of men And the rise of the women is i the creation of women All 1 our movements for collective progress fundamentally are measures for the cultivation of the individual All our swarming clubs societies and divers organizations arc freeing the individual They are giving him his liberty from the ancient group activity and providing him with a channel for expressing his uniqueness They furnish different churches for the same family different clubs for different ages different social sets for twin sisters sis-ters 1 Mothers of a generation ago lived in and for their families none I of whom perhaps had similar tastes to their own Now they ehooe their own mates in clubs and classes of congenial temper And when husbands prove misfits they gel themselves others The children follow in their wake Sisters no longer nccessarilyare chums by Dimple virtue of the funnily I funn-ily relation The blood tie ii i insufficient when there are no bonds of the I higher life Each drifts into her own sympathetil circle which is formed I quite irrelevantly to the family communities The youngest are separating from the family collectively Witness our public nurseries i The rigid family institution holds too often uncongenial un-congenial natures into close relationship with no reason save the most material and economic considerations con-siderations Therefore it is bound to pass It is a unit formed of bonds that cease to hold Surviving so long as it proves useful the family will be 1 displaced dis-placed by more loosely constructed groups of persons drawn together by superphysical tics r |
