to its freedom from the very atmosphere it professes to supply.
That atmosphere is usually described as an atmosphere of love; and
this definition should be sufficient to put any sane person on
guard against it. The people who talk and write as if the highest
attainable state is that of a family stewing in love continuously
from the cradle to the grave, can hardly have given five minutes
serious consideration to so outrageous a proposition. They cannot
have even made up their minds as to what they mean by love; for
when they expatiate on their thesis they are sometimes talking
about kindness, and sometimes about mere appetite. In either sense
they are equally far from the realities of life. No healthy man or
animal is occupied with love in any sense for more than a very
small fraction indeed of the time he devotes to business and to
recreations wholly unconnected with love. A wife entirely
preoccupied with her affection for her husband, a mother entirely
preoccupied with her affection for her children, may be all very
well in a book (for people who like that kind of book); but in
actual life she is a nuisance. Husbands may escape from her when
their business compels them to be away from home all day; but
young children may be, and quite often are, killed by her cuddling
and coddling and doctoring and preaching: above all, by her
continuous attempts to excite precocious sentimentality, a
practice as objectionable, and possibly as mischievous, as the
worst tricks of the worst nursemaids.


LARGE AND SMALL FAMILIES

In most healthy families there is a revolt against this tendency.
The exchanging of presents on birthdays and the like is barred by