If, as we have been popularly led to
believe, the individual or separate family is the true order of
Providence, then the associate life is a false effort. If the associate
life is true, then is the separate family a false arrangement. By the
maternal feeling it appears to be decided that the co?xistence of both
is incompatible--is impossible. So also say some religious sects.
Social science ventures to assert their harmony. This is the grand
problem now remaining to be solved, for at least the enlightening, if
not for the vital elevation, of humanity. That the affections can be
divided, or bent with equal ardor on two objects so opposed as
universal and individual love, may at least be rationally doubted.
History has not yet exhibited such phenomena in an associate body, and
scarcely, perhaps, in any individual.
The monasteries and convents, which have existed in all ages, have been
maintained solely by the annihilation of that peculiar affection on
which the separate family is based. The Shaker families, in which the
two sexes are not entirely dissociated, can yet only maintain their
union by forbidding and preventing the growth of personal affection
other than that of a spiritual character.
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