falls into this form. So I
see it, Lady Harman. The generation of our grandfathers in the opening
nineteenth century had two shaping ideas, two forms of thought, the
family and progress, not realizing that that very progress which had
suddenly reopened the doors of opportunity for the family that had
revived the ancient injunction to increase and multiply and replenish
the earth, might presently close that door again and declare the world
was filled. But that is what is happening now. The doors close. That
immense swarming and multiplying of little people is over, and the
forces of social organization have been coming into play now, more and
more for a century and a half, to produce new wholesale ways of doing
things, new great organizations, organizations that invade the
autonomous family more and more, and are perhaps destined ultimately to
destroy it altogether and supersede it. At least it is so I make my
reading of history in these matters."

"Yes," said Lady Harman, with knitted brows, "Yes," and wondered
privately whether it would be possible to get from that opening to the
matter of her Hostels before it was time for her to return for Sir
Isaac's tea.

Mr. Brumley continued to talk with his eyes fixed as it were upon his
thoughts. "These things, Lady Harman, go on at different paces in
different regions. I will not trouble you with a discussion of that, or
of emigration, of any of the details of the vast proliferation that
preceded the present phase. Suffice it, that now all the tendency is
back towards restraints upon increase, to an increasing celibacy, to a
fall in the birth-rate and in the average size of families, to--to a
release of women from an entire devotion to a numerous offspring, and so
at last to the supersession of those little family units that for four
centuries have made up the substance of social life and determined
nearly all our moral and sentimental attitudes. The autonomy of the
family is being steadily destroyed, and it is being replaced by the
autonomy of the individual in relation to some syndicated economic
effort."

"I think," said Lady Harman slowly, arresting him by a gesture, "if you
could make that about autonomy a little clearer...."

Mr. Brumley did. He went on to point out with the lucidity of a
University Extension lecturer what he meant by these singular phrases.
She listened intelligently but with effort. He was much too intent upon
getting the thing expressed to his o