I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained, ... They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, No one is dissatisfied—not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth. III. THE FAMILY AS A CORPORATE PERSON After the individual’s own person, the most intimate environment to which the person responds is the family. The family is, or was, under earlier and simpler conditions of life, a sort of larger corporate person. Among the Polish peasants, for example, where the family completely dominates the individual, “husband and wife,” we are told, “are not individuals more or less closely connected according to their personal sentiments, but group members, controlled by both the united families.”[59] It is on this basis that we can understand completely the letters written by immigrant boys to their parents asking them to send them wives: DEAREST PARENTS: Please do not be angry with me for what I shall write. I write you that it is hard to live alone, so please find some girl for me, but an orderly [honest] one, for in America there is not even one single orderly [Polish] girl.... [December 21, 1902.] I thank you kindly for your letter, for it was happy. As to the girl, although I don’t know her, my companion, who knows her, says that she is stately and pretty, and I believe him, as well as you, my parents.... Please inform me which one (of the sisters) is to come, the older or the younger one, whether Aledsandra or Stanislawa.[60] Of such a family it may almost be said that the unrebellious and completely accommodated individuals who compose it have ceased to exist as persons. They have no independent social status and no personal responsibilities except as members of the family group. The family, as it exists under modern conditions, has fallen from the high estimation in which it was held by an earlier generation. I once heard a distinguished psychologist say that he had been forced to the conclusion, after much patient study, that the family was probably the worst possible place in which to bring up a child. In general, I should say the psychiatrists seem to have a very poor opinion of the modern family as an environment for children. This opinion, if it is not justified, is at least supported by studies of juvenile delinquency made some years ago, in which it appeared that 50 per cent of the delinquencies studied were from broken homes.