their own absolute rectitude and often masked under the shape of Duty. Yet
when prolonged beyond the age of childhood they tend to become a clog on
development, and a hindrance to a wholesome life. The child who cherishes
such emotion is likely to suffer infantile arrest of development, and the
parent who is so selfish as to continue to expend such tenderness on a
child who has passed the age of childhood, or to demand it, is guilty of a
serious offence against that child.

That the intimate family life which sometimes resulted--especially when,
as frequently happened, the seeming mutual devotion was also real--might
often be regarded as beautiful and almost ideal, it has been customary to
repeat with an emphasis that in the end has even become nauseous. For it
was usually overlooked that the self-centred and enclosed family, even
when the mutual affection of its members was real enough to bear all
examination, could scarcely be more than partially beautiful, and could
never be ideal. For the family only represents one aspect, however
important an aspect, of a human being's functions and activities. He
cannot, she cannot, be divorced from the life of the social group, and a
life is beautiful and ideal, or the reverse, only when we have taken into
our consideration the social as well as the family relationship. When the
family claims to prevent the free association of an adult member of it
with the larger social organisation, it is claiming that the part is
greater than the whole, and such a claim cannot fail to be morbid and
mischievous.

The old-world method of treating children, we know, has long ago been
displaced as containing an element of harsh tyranny. But it was not
perceived, and it seems indeed not even yet to be generally recognised,
that the system which replaced it, and is only now beginning to pass away,
involved another and more subtle tyranny, the more potent because not