If the
idea of home as the shell is standing in the way of developing the idea of
home as a state of mind, then let us cast loose the load of things that
are sinking us in the sea of care beyond rescue.
It is quite possible that we may return to that state of mind in which
there was a pleasure in caring for beautiful objects. The housewife of
colonial days did not disdain the washing of her cups of precious china or
doing up the heirlooms of lace and embroidery. When our possessions
acquire an intrinsic value, when all the work of the house which cannot be
done by machinery is that of handling beautiful things and has a meaning
in the life of the individual and the family, service will not be required
in the vast majority of homes: then we may approach to the Utopian ideal
of the nobility of labor.
"The plain message that physical science has for the world at large is
this, that were our political and social and moral devices only as well
contrived to their ends as a linotype machine, an antiseptic
operating-plant, or an electric tram-car, there need now, at the present
moment, be no appreciable toil in the world, and only the smallest
fraction of the pain, the fear, and the anxiety that now make human life
so doubtful in its value.
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