But cannot much more of the sentiment be traced to association? There must be ties, equal to those of blood, in life from the earliest remembrance about the same hearth and at the same mother's knee that mother who remains sacred, we will not say either because of instinct or because of the result of long teaching, but because she bore us. And while we are a portion of the flesh and blood of our parents, and love is thus compelled, they would be strange beings if we might not also love them for themselves. But whether or not, we see that there is no time, in all that season when emotions are fresh and character is forming, in which the others of the family are not integral and inherent portions, and again through our very love of self they are dear to us.
But whether this family feeling is, in its essentials, a God-given instinct or a matter of growth and education, it is at the foundation of all our civil polity, and the family is at the base of the town, as the town is at the base of the State; and so long as the family relation is kept pure and undefiled among any people, so long as children honor their parents, as parents bear in mind their responsibility concerning those whom they have brought into the world, as the hearts of brothers and sisters beat as one, so long will that people possess shields and safeguards against enemies in having homes and altar-fires worth fighting for.
There are few things more beautiful to see than this family affection, the solicitude of the old for the young, the reverence of the young for the old, the gentle ties of affiliation between sister and sister, the noble loyalty of brother for brother, the attention to trifles that makes happiness for one another, the deadening of strife and destruction of envy, the mutual aiding and uplifting.
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| Reverence of the young for the old. |
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