The name is absent

Predicament of Human Incompetence 21
proven true because our human nature is more impression-
able than it is reasonable, and we are most impressionable
in the first few years after birth. To make a good home,
where this vital work with first impressions can be done, is
not only our greatest personal satisfaction, but one of the
greatest services to render to the world today. The kind
of homes our young people make in the years ahead will
largely determine what kind of bulwark we shall have
against the encroachments of an all-powerful, centralized
state.

To this end we must have a constant supply of marriages
which commit people to a permanent union, where two lives
may learn to live through mistakes and differences and fail-
ures. This relation of fidelity has best been secured by a
lifelong preparation in fidelity among those who form a
society of their own kind, where fidelity is held in profound-
est respect, and defended against its perversion in respect-
able promiscuity. Nothing reaches so far into the future as
to give children a chance to live in such a home that stands
by them while they meet the unknown, steadies them through
the free experiments of youth, and furnishes them with the
family tie which holds them to the excellent, expressed in
those who have loved and trusted them, while granting
them liberty to make their own decisions in an original life
of their own.

In the family the principle holds that our growth occurs
in the area of relation between people who are different.
Incidentally, that fact favors a reasonably long period of
courtship when partners can discover the peculiarities of
character which come out of different backgrounds, and
which are sure to stick out like sore thumbs as they grow
older. Some of us wonder how our wives could have put up
with us for so long had they not had some adequate pre-
views of the coming attractions.

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