Like the hall, the prison does form a society, a companionship, a communion (_e. g._ communion of labor), but no _intercourse_, no reciprocity, no _union_. On the contrary, every union in the prison bears within it the dangerous seed of a "plot," which under favorable circumstances might spring up and bear fruit. Yet one does not usually enter the prison voluntarily, and seldom remains in it voluntarily either, but cherishes the egoistic desire for liberty. Here, therefore, it sooner becomes manifest that personal intercourse is in hostile relations to the prison society and tends to the dissolution of this very society, this joint incarceration. Let us therefore look about for such communions as, it seems, we remain in gladly and voluntarily, without wanting to endanger them by our egoistic impulses. As a communion of the required sort the _family_ offers itself in the first place. Parents, husband and wife, children, brothers and sisters, represent a whole or form a family, for the further widening of which the collateral relatives also may be made to serve if taken into account. The family is a true communion only when the law of the family, piety[160] or family love, is observed by its members. A son to whom parents, brothers, and sisters have become indifferent _has been_ a son; for, as the sonship no longer shows itself efficacious, it has no greater significance than the long-past connection of mother and child by the navel-string. That one has once lived in this bodily juncture cannot as a fact be undone; and so far one remains irrevocably this mother's son and the brother of the rest of her children; but it would come to a lasting connection only by lasting piety, this spirit of the family. Individuals are members of a family in the full sense only when they make the _persistence_ of the family their task; only as _conservative_ do they keep aloof from doubting their basis, the family. To every member of the family one thing must be fixed and sacred,--_viz._, the family itself, or, more expressively, piety. That the family is to _persist_ remains to its member, so long as he keeps himself free from that egoism which is hostile to the family, an unassailable truth. In a word:--If the family is sacred, then nobody who belongs to it may secede from it; else he becomes a "criminal" against the family: he may never pursue an interest hostile to the family, _e. g._ form a misalliance. He who does this has "dishonored the family," "put it to shame," etc. Now, if in an individual the egoistic impulse has not force enough, he complies and makes a marriage which suits the claims of the family, takes a rank which harmonizes with its position, and the like; in short, he "does honor to the family." If, on the contrary, the egoistic blood flows fierily enough in his veins, he prefers to become a "criminal" against the family and to throw off its laws.