B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.
The evolution of all hereditary instincts has been explained by the “survival of the fittest,” and the instinct of homestead-love has doubtlessly been developed in the same way. The results of its predominance prevailed against the results of its absence. Defensive love of a private “hearth and home” is the basis of patriotism, so unmistakably, indeed, that the fathers of the Roman republic for centuries refused to employ foreign mercenaries, who had no personal interest in the defense of the soil. As a modern humorist has cleverly expressed it: “Few men have been patriotic enough to shoulder a musket in defense of a boarding-house.” And the golden age of civic virtues is almost limited to the time when every free citizen of Greece and Rome was a landowner.
Nor would it be easy to overrate the subjective advantages of home-life. Health, happiness, and longevity have no more insidious foe than the canker-worm of vexation; and for the unavoidable disappointments of social life there is no more effective specific than the peace of a prosperous private homestead, soothing the mind with evidences of success in the growth of a promising orchard, in the increase [[215]]and improvement of domestic animals, in the happiness of merry children and contented dependents. Xenophon, after proving the excitements of an adventurous life by land and sea, found a truer happiness in the solitude of his Arcadian hunting-lodge. Felix Sylla, Fortune’s most constant favorite, abandoned the throne of a mighty empire to enjoy the frugal fare of a small hill-farm. Voltaire, worn out by the trials of a fifty years’ life-and-death struggle against the rancor of bigots, recovered his health and his peace of mind amidst the pear-tree plantations of Villa Ferney.
In the resources of medicine and scientific surgery the ancients were far behind even the half-civilized nations of modern times, but their children could enjoy their holidays on their own playground, their sleepers could breathe pure air, their worn-out laborers could retire to the peace of a private home; and they enjoyed a degree of health and vigor which our most progressive nations can hope to re-attain only after centuries of sanitary reform.