No true home, standing solitarily apart from the town (unbound, as it
were) could be the blessed thing it is were there not so many other
houses not standing apart but gathered into villages, towns and cities.
Whence comes civilization but from _civitas_, the city? And where did
_civitas_ get its name, when city and state were one, but from citizen?
He is not named for the city but the city for him, and his title meant
first the head of a household, the master of a home. To make a
civilization, great numbers of men must have homes, must mass them
compactly together and must not mass them together on a dead level of
equal material equipment but in a confederation of homes of all ranks
and conditions.
The home is the cornerstone of the state.
The town, the organized assemblage of homes, is the keystone of
civilization's arch.
In order to keep our whole civilization moving on and up, _which is the
only way for home and town to pay to each other their endless spiral of
reciprocal indebtedness_, every home in a town--or state, for that
matter--should be made as truly and fully a home as every wise effort
and kind influence of all the other homes can make it. Unless it takes
part in this effort and influence, no home, be it ever so favored, can
realize, even for itself and in itself, the finest civilization it might
attain.
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