To give up the ancestral hearth, to let the family traditions fall into desuetude, to abandon the simple domestic customs, for whatever return, is to make a fool's bargain; and such is the place in society of family life, that if this be impoverished, the trouble is felt throughout the whole social organism. To enjoy a normal development, this organism has need of well-tried individuals, each having his own value, his own hall-mark. Otherwise society becomes a flock, and sometimes a flock without a shepherd. But whence does the individual draw his originality--this unique something, which, joined to the distinctive qualities of others, constitutes the wealth and strength of a community? He can draw it only from his own family. Destroy the assemblage of memories and practices whence emanates for each home an atmosphere in miniature, and you dry up the sources of character, sap the strength of public spirit. It concerns the country that each home be a world, profound, respected, communicating to its members an ineffaceable moral imprint. But before pursuing the subject further, let us rid ourselves of a misunderstanding. Family feeling, like all beautiful things, has its caricature, which is family egoism. Some families are like barred and bolted citadels, their members organized for the exploitation of the whole world. Everything that does not directly concern them is indifferent to them. They live like colonists, I had almost said intruders, in the society around them. Their particularism is pushed to such an excess that they make enemies of the whole human race. In their small way they resemble those powerful societies, formed from time to time through the ages, which possess themselves of universal rule, and for which no one outside their own community counts. This is the spirit that has sometimes made the family seem a retreat of egoism which it was necessary to destroy for the public safety. But as patriotism and jingoism are as far apart as the east from the west, so are family feeling and clannishness. * * * * * Here we are talking of right family feeling, and nothing else in the world can take its place; for in it lie in germ all those fine and simple virtues which assure the strength and duration of social institutions. And the very base of family feeling is respect for the past; for the best possessions of a family are its common memories. An intangible, indivisible and inalienable capital, these souvenirs constitute a sacred fund that each member of a family ought to consider more precious than anything else he possesses. They exist in a dual form: in idea and in fact. They show themselves in language, habits of thought, sentiments, even instincts, and one sees them materialized in portraits, furniture, buildings, dress, songs. To profane eyes, they are nothing; to the eyes of those who know how to appreciate the things of the family, they are relics with which one should not part at any price.