Only Man Has a Home
October 15, 2015
Still Life, Leon De Smet; 1928
THESE are the opening pages of the 1880 book Home and Health and Home Economics by Charles Henry Fowler, who was president of Northwestern University from 1872 to 1876, and William H. De Puy. It’s hard to imagine this guide to home economics being written today.
Only Man has a Home.—The tired lark sinks in the evening shades down to its quiet nest, and oilers its grateful anthems for the boon of a house; but man, wearied with the strifes of the mart and of the field, seeks shelter in his home, the sacred retreat of the heart. Foxes have holes, birds have nests, lions have dens, tigers have lairs, dogs have kennels, but men have homes. The supreme putting of divine love is found in Jesus, when he forsakes his home, and wanders a stranger, not having where to lay his head; while the extreme display of human sinfulness is found with those human creatures who are “without natural affections.”
Virtues of the Hearth are the Securities of the Peoples.—The home is the cradle of the great virtues. The Church was organized in the family. The power to command his household and his children after him was the spring of Abraham’s call to be the Father of the faithful and founder of the Church. There is one bond that encircles earth and heaven. It is woven from the most tender longings and hunger of the heart. It binds the humblest home on earth to the Home of our Father on High. It domesticates the angels in cabins. The love of mother is often the last cable that holds a youth to his moorings. Beaten upon by the storm of his passions, every other stay gives way. Every other anchor drags. But the love of mother, that was dropped deep into his soul’s substance before he got out of the nursery, holds. While that holds he is almost certain to outride the wildest gales. So the Home, which is the sanctuary where this spirit presides, is a perpetual protection. It is an ark floating with us down the tide of the years. It carries the virtues that make the citizen, and the inspirations that develops the saint. It is not merely a shelter from the storm, it is also a workshop, where the grandest characters are built. It is a preeminent opportunity for the achievement of good. To miss this chief purpose of the home is to lower its grade.
The Home builds the House.—The divine idea of home-life types the building. There is something in every germ of life which determines its form. Time and opportunity bring out only this ideal. The germ of a kernel of barley can be matured, not into a stalk and head of wheat, but into a stalk and head of barley. The germs of the fish and of the bird and of man are, at certain stages of development, indistinguishable. But there is always present a superintending spiritual power, too subtle for our microscopes and chemistries, that determines what form each shall wear. The fish grows into a fish. The bird becomes a bird. The man matures into a man. Each obeys its inner bias. Thus the inner instinct, or thought of the home, fashions the house. Its apartments grow upon this stalk. From the kitchen where the animal is fed, the nursery where the training is ordered, the chamber where the recuperative forces are stored, the sitting room where the social life is nourished, to the reception room or parlor, where the life of society is met and mastered—all these grow about the deeper idea of home. It is this subtle and powerful spirit, born out of the innermost heart, that invariably locates the home where the heart is. The settler’s cabin and the peasant’s hut, clothed with this inspiration from the heart, become centers of comfort and contentment that time is unable to drive from the mind. Life rises out of this inspiration to its highest values. Thus the home becomes the measure of a nation’s stability. A tramp may become a hired soldier, but he can hardly rise to the promptings of patriotism. His life has too little in it to be worth much defending. His life is cheap. He waits for whatever may happen. When a man has a home he becomes immediately interested in the peace of the community. He has given hostages against mobs. It is important for him that the pavement stones should keep their places, and not go flying through the air. Both heads and windows acquire a sacredness from those in which he is interested. A man without a home has little motive for standing against public perils. If a land does not furnish a man so much as a home, he can drift away when it becomes dangerous to remain anchored. Fill any land with good homes, and it must be a good place in which to live. It is one peculiarity of the Anglo-Saxon peoples that they abound in homes. The walls about the hearth shut out all the world, and shut in a kingdom. This is the fort; keep it clean and free, and religion will thrive and liberty will dwell in the land forever.
[From Home and Health and Home Economics, C.H. Fowler and W.H. De Puy; Phillips and Hunt, New York, 1880; pp 9-10.]
