A good many jokes have been made as to who is the head of a household--the man or the wife; and the question is occasionally a subject of dispute; but in the family authority tends to adjust itself. It can only exist when there is mutual toleration and respect. Each member may be acutely conscious of the shortcomings of the other and may discuss them freely, but they all tend to unite against outside criticism, and if they are aware of each other's demerits, they are equally sharp to recognise qualities which help to their advancement. So that while one member may be the head of the family, another may be the centre of the family. It is not always either the father or the mother that exercises most influence in the family council. These matters are determined by circumstances, and when there is discord and disunion it is almost invariably due to a disregard of natural aptitudes and tendencies in the children, and to an insistence on parental rights in the narrow sense. The enforcement of mutual responsibility implies the recognition of mutual power. The community in which we live is mainly made up of families. Yet men are considered as individuals, legislated for, and supervised as though this were not the case; and the authorities, instead of working through the family on the individual, contrive to raise the family feeling against them. The State is not an aggregation of men, but an aggregation of families; and when men are considered in the mass they are considered without relation to their usual surroundings. It has been pointed out that the crowd takes on characters different from the individuals composing it, but it is quite wrong to imagine that men have ordinarily to be regarded as units in a crowd. Attempts are made to supervise men in masses; that is what takes place in institutions. Individuals are supervised in certain circumstances outside, but they are best supervised in conjunction and in co-operation with the members of the family of which for a time they form a part.