Though they are often represented as abstract entities--as figures in a table of statistics or dots on a diagram--they have in reality "organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions." If not exactly "fed with the same food," they are at least "hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means," and liable to be irritated by the same annoyances as we are.

And those of them who live in large families are subjected to a kind of probation that most of us have never dreamed of.

The families comprising a large household not only live together, but have nearly all things in common.

Each member works, not for himself, but for the household, and all that he earns is expected to go into the family treasury.

The arrangement almost inevitably leads to one of two results--either there are continual dissensions, or order is preserved by a powerful domestic tyranny.
It is quite natural, therefore, that when the authority of the landed proprietors was abolished in 1861, the large peasant families almost all crumbled to pieces.