Its Death Blow
“Now, the forcible toeing the line by each family to a fixed income and ambition would hit the life of the home a death blow.
“I will give you one instance. Ambition would be tom up by the roots. God only knows all the fine things that are clinging to the roots of Ambition. Man knows a few of them. Fathers of families deny themselves and work hard that they may see their sons and daughters advance in the world; knowing, as they do, that material advance is bound up with good conduct, they look to their own conduct and the teaching of their children. Mothers do the same.
“Look at life as you know it, and tell me frankly, is not this true? That the destruction of Ambition in the family would tend largely to destroy the energy and life of the family and its power as a centre of force.”
“It is true.”
“Yet your Advanced Socialist, with his eyes fixed on what he calls ‘the State,’ does not reckon on this, and his theory, were it turned to practice, would destroy Ambition.
“Then, again, Pride, not pride in high deeds, but pure, low-down, material pride—how nasty it is, but what a tremendous force it is! From the cock that crows to the State that prospers, it is ubiquitous as sodium. It is purely human and animal, yet it is one of the major forces that hold the family together and make it living.
“Yet, if Ambition goes, material Pride must go—absolutely. Then take the Hoarding Instinct. This would be absolutely destroyed by your Advanced Socialist, yet without the Hoarding Instinct, which, in a more or less attenuated form, is the Saving Instinct, family morality would cut a poor show. Self-denial would vanish and that demi-virtue, Carefulness.
“You will notice that I am keeping entirely to material instincts and things, and I will rise to the height of saying that the teaching of the destruction of the Hoarding Instinct by Socialists is a blasphemous teaching, and the blasphemy is against the Holy Spirit of Good. I have left the individual for the family, but the destruction of this instinct would wreck the individual as well as the family.