.

Adoption.
But one may go a step farther in this matter of the family, and by so doing fare still worse with respect to individuality.

There are certain customs in vogue among these peoples which would seem to indicate that even so generic a thing as the family is too personal to serve them for ultimate social atom, and that in fact it is only the idea of the family that is really important, a case of abstraction of an abstract.

These suggestive customs are the far-eastern practices of adoption and abdication.
Adoption, with us, is a kind of domestic luxury, akin to the keeping of any other pets, such as lap-dogs and canaries.

It is a species of self-indulgence which those who can afford it give themselves when fortune has proved unpropitious, an artificial method of counteracting the inequalities of fate.