And in the same manner, with myself in the rôle of that minute but observant cabin-boy, I would sustain the proposition that none of these movements of partial reconstruction has the sound common-sense quality its supporters suppose. All these movements are worth while if they can be taken into a world-wide movement; all in isolation are futile. They will be overlaid and lost in the general drift. The policy of the whole hog is the best one, the sanest one, the easiest and the most hopeful. If sufficient men and women of intelligence can realise that simple truth and give up their lives to it, mankind may yet achieve a civilisation and power and fullness of life beyond our present dreams. If they do not, frustration will triumph, and war, violence and a drivelling waste of time and strength and desire, more disgusting even than war, will be the lot of our race down through the ages to its emaciated and miserable end. For this little planet of ours is quite off the course of any rescue ships, if the will in our species fails. _Chapter XV_ THE CREATIVE HOME, SOCIAL GROUP AND SCHOOL: THE PRESENT WASTE OF YOUTHFUL SERIOUSNESS Human society began with the family. The natural history of gregariousness is a history of the establishment of mutual toleration among human animals, so that a litter or a herd keeps together instead of breaking up. It is in the family group that the restraints, disciplines and self-sacrifices which make human society possible were worked out and our fundamental prejudices established, and it is in the family group that our social life must be relearnt generation after generation.