The institution of the family

In chapter 14 of 'Heretics', Chesterton attacks some modern thoughts about the family. The argument has some similarities to the discussion in chapter 3 about Kipling: people need to realize that a 'man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world'. In a family, one cannot choose one's peers, so one really meets with different people. In a big society, cliques are formed and people have the possibility to minimize encounters with people who are significantly different. Traveling may widen our horizons, but it may also narrow down our interactions with our neighbors in our street.

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbor. Hence he comes to us clad in all the careless terrors of nature; he is as strange as the stars, as reckless and indifferent as the rain. He is Man, the most terrible of beasts. That is why the old religions and the old scriptural language showed so sharp a wisdom when they spoke, not of one's duty towards humanity, but one's duty towards one's neighbor.