To us, who have for so many unbroken generations been wholly bound to the home, who honestly believe that its service and maintenance constitute the whole duty of men and women, the picture of a world in which home and its affairs takes but a small part of life's attention gives rather a blank outlook. What else are we to do! What else to love – what else to serve eternally! What else to revere, to worship! How shall we occupy the hands of man if but a tithe of his labour supports him in comfort; how fill the heart of woman, when her family are happily and rightly served without sacrificing her in the operation! It is hard, at first – we being so accustomed to spend all life in merely keeping ourselves alive – to see what life might be when we had some to spare. We find it difficult to imagine this "world of trouble" as rid of its troubles; as rationally and comfortably managed; peaceful, clean, safe, healthy, giving everyone room and time to grow. Nor need we labour to forecast events too accurately; especially the material details which must be decided by long experiment. No rigid prescription is needed; no dictum as to whether we shall live in small separate houses, greenly gardened, with closely connected conveniences for service and for education, for work and play; or in towering palaces with shaded flower-bright courts and cloisters. All that must work out as have our great modern wonders in other lines, little by little, in orderly development. But what we can forecast in safety is the effect on the human body and the human soul.

A peaceful, healthy, happy babyhood and childhood, with such delicate adjustment of educational processes as we already see indicated, will give us a far better individual. The full-grown mother, contributing racial advance in both body and mind, will add greatly to this gain. We can be better people everywhere, better born, bred, fed, educated in all ways. But quite beyond this is the rich growth of our long aborted social instincts, which will rapidly follow the reduction of these long artificially maintained primitive and animal instincts.

Where now trying to meet general needs by personal efforts, modern needs by ancient methods, we must perforce manifest an intense degree of self-interest to keep up the struggle; as soon as we meet these needs easily, swiftly, inexpensively, by modern methods and common efforts, less self-interest will be necessary.

When sidewalks were narrow and streets foul, great was the jostling, keen the resentment – "You take the wall of me, sir!" Where all is broad, clean, safe, no such hot feeling exists. We do not truly prefer to be always sharply looking out for ourselves; it is much more interesting to look out for each other; but this method of handicapping each man with his own affairs, in such needless weight, keeps up a selfishness which true civilisation tends steadily to eliminate. Social instincts in social conditions are as natural as animal instincts in animal conditions.

Starving, shipwrecked sailors, robbed of all social advantages, are reduced sometimes even to cannibalism. Polite people at a banquet show no hint of such fierce, relentless greed. Relieved of the necessity for spending our whole time taking care of ourselves, we shall deliciously launch forward into the much larger pleasure of taking care of one another. Relieved of the ceaseless, instant pressure of purely physical needs, we shall be able to put forth the true demands of human life at last. The mind, no longer penned in its weary treadmill of private affairs, will spread into its legitimate area – public affairs. We shall be able to see a greater number of things at once, and care about them. That larger-mindedness will be an immediate result; for we have already far more capacity than we use.

We have developed the modern civilised mind, the social mind, through the world's work; but we bury it, enslave it, stultify it, in the home's work. A new power – a new sense of range – freedom, growth, as of a great stream flowing freely; plenty of force to work with, plenty of room to work in – this is what will follow as we learn to properly relate the home to the rest of life.

Once the mind rises, free, outside those old enclosing, crushing walls, it will see life with different eyes. Our common good will appear to us as naturally as our private good does now. At present the average mind does not seem able to grasp a great general fact, be it for good or evil.

To make a man appreciate the proposed advantage, realise the impending or existing evil, we must "bring it home to him," make him feel it "where he lives." When his home does not occupy most of his mind, tax his strength, reduce his range of interest and affection, he can see the big things more easily. When he "lives" in the whole city —i. e., thinks about it, cares about it, works for it, loves it – then he will promptly feel anything that affects it in any part. This common love and care are just as possible to human beings as love and care for one's own young are possible to the beasts. It is possible; it is natural; it is a great and increasing joy; but its development is checked by a system which requires all our love and care for our own, and even then does not properly provide for them.

The love of human beings for each other is not a dream of religion, it is a law of nature. It is bred of human contact, of human relation, of human service; it rests on identical interest and the demands of a social development which must include all, if it permanently lift any. Against this perfectly natural development stands this opposing shell; this earlier form of life, essential in its place, most mischievous out of it; this early cradle of humanity in which lie smothered the full-grown people of to-day.

Must we then leave it – lose it – go without it? Never. The more broadly socialised we become, the more we need our homes to rest in. The large area is necessary for the human soul; the big, modern, civilised social nature. But we are still separate animal beings as well as collective social beings. Always we need to return to the dear old ties, to the great primal basis, that we may rise refreshed and strengthened, like Antæus from the earth. Private, secluded, sweet, wholly our own; not invaded by any trade or work or business, not open to the crowd; the place of the one initial and undying group of father, mother, and child, will remain to us. These, and the real friend, are all that belong to the home.

It should be the recognised base and background of our lives; but those lives must be lived in their true area, the world. And so lived, by both of us, all of us; shared in by the child, served in by the woman as well as the man; that world will grow to have the sense of intimacy, of permanent close attachment, of comfort and pleasure and rest, which now attaches only to the home.

So, living, really living in the world and loving it, the presence there of father, mother, and child will gradually bring out in it all the beauty and safety, the refreshment and strength we so vainly seek to ensure in our private home. The sense of duty, of reverence, of love, honestly transferred to the world we live in, will have its natural, its inevitable effect, and make that world our home at last.