CHAPTER IX: THE FAMILY.

§ 315. Let us now look at the connexions between types of family and social types. Do societies of different degrees of composition habitually present different forms of domestic arrangement? Are different forms of domestic arrangement associated with the militant system of organization and the industrial system of organization?

To the first of these questions no satisfactory answer can be given. The same marital relation occurs in the simplest groups and in the most compound groups. A strict monogamy is observed by the miserable Wood Veddahs, living so widely scattered that they can scarcely be said to have reached the social state; and the wandering Bushmen, similarly low, though not debarred from polygyny, are usually monogamic. Certain settled and more advanced peoples, too, are monogamic; as instance those of Port Dory (New Guinea), and as instance also the Dyaks, who have reached a stage passing from simple into compound. And then we find monogamy habitual with nations which have become vast by aggregation and re-aggregation. Polyandry, again, is not restricted to societies of one order of composition. It occurs in simple groups, as among the Fuegians, the Aleutians, and the Todas; and it occurs in compound groups in Ceylon, in Malabar, in Thibet. Similarly with the distribution of polygyny. It is common to simple, compound, doubly-compound, and even trebly-compound societies. One kind of Edition: current; Page: [687] connexion between the type of family and the degree of social composition may, however, be alleged. Formation of compound groups, implying greater co-ordination and the strengthening of restraints, implies more settled arrangements, public and private. Growth of custom into law, which goes along with an extending governmental organization holding larger masses together, affects the domestic relations along with the political relations; and thus renders the family arrangements, be they polyandric, polygynic, or monogamic, more definite.

Can we, then, allege special connexions between the different types of family and the different social types classed as militant and industrial? None are revealed by a cursory inspection. Looking first at simple tribes, we see among the unwarlike Todas, a mixed polyandry and polygyny; and among the Esquimaux, so peaceful as not even to understand the meaning of war, we see, along with monogamic unions, others that are polyandric and polygynic. At the same time the warlike Caribs show us a certain amount of polyandry and a greater amount of polygyny. If, turning to the opposite extreme, we compare with one another large nations, ancient and modern, it seems that the militant character in some cases co-exists with a prevalent polygyny and in other cases with a prevalent or universal monogamy. Nevertheless we shall, on examining the facts more closely, discern general connexions between the militant type and polygyny, and between the industrial type and monogamy.

But first we must recognize the truth that a predominant militancy is not so much shown by armies and the conquests they achieve, as by constancy of predatory activities. The contrast between militant and industrial, is properly between a state in which life is occupied in conflict with other beings, brute and human, and a state in which life is occupied in peaceful labour—energies spent in destruction instead of energies spent in production. So conceiving militancy, we find polygyny to be its habitual accompaniment.

To trace the co-existence of the two from Australians and Tasmanians on through the more developed simple societies up to the compound and doubly compound, would be tedious and is needless; for observing, as we have already done (§ 304), the prevalence of polygyny in the less advanced societies, and admitting, as we must, their state of chronic hostility to their neighbours, the co-existence of these traits is a corollary. That this co-existence results from causal connexion, is suggested by certain converse cases. Among the natives of Port Dory, New Guinea, there is a strict monogamy, with forbidding of divorce, in a primitive community comparatively unwarlike and comparatively industrial. Another instance is furnished by the Land Dyaks, who are monogamic to the extent that polygyny is an offence; while, though given to tribal quarrels about their lands and to the taking of heads as trophies, they have such industrial development that the men, instead of making war and the chase habitual occupations, do much of the heavy work, and there is division of trades with some commercial intercourse. The Hill-tribes of India furnish other instances. There are the amiable Bodo and Dhimáls, without military arrangements and having no weapons but their agricultural implements, who are industrially advanced to the extent that there is exchange of services and that the men do all the out-of-door work; and they are monogamous. Similarly the monogamous Lepchas are wholly unwarlike. Such, too, is the relation of traits in certain societies of the New World distinguished from the rest by being partially or entirely industrial. Whereas most of the aborigines of North America, habitually polygynous, live solely to hunt and fight, the Iroquois had permanent villages and cultivated lands; and each of them had but one wife. More marked still is the case of the Pueblos, who, “walling out black barbarism” by their ingeniously conglomerated houses, fight only in self-defence, and when let alone engage exclusively in agricultural and other industries, and whose marital relations are strictly Edition: current; Page: [689] monoganic. This connexion of traits in the simpler societies, where not directly implied by the inadequate descriptions of travellers, is often traceable indirectly. We have seen (§ 250), that there is a natural relation between constant fighting and development of chiefly power: the implication being that where, in settled tribes, the chiefly power is small the militancy is not great. And this is the fact in those above-named communities characterized by monogamy. In Dalrymple Island (Torres Strait) there are no chiefs; among the Hill-Dyaks subordination to chiefs is feeble; the headman of each Bodo and Dhimál village has but nominal authority; the Lepcha flees from coercion; and the governor of a Pueblo town is annually elected. Conversely, the polygyny which prevails in simple predatory tribes, persists in aggregates of them welded together by war into small nations under established rulers; and in these frequently acquires large extensions. In Polynesia it characterizes in a marked way the warlike and tyrannically-governed Fijians. All through the African kingdoms there goes polygyny along with developed chieftainship, rising to great heights in Ashanti and Dahomey, where the governments are coercive in extreme degrees. The like may be said of the extinct American societies: polygyny was an attribute of dignity among the rigorously-ruled Peruvians, Mexicans, Chibchas, Nicaraguans. And the old despotisms of the East were also characterized by polygyny. Allied with this evidence is the evidence that in a simple tribe all the men of which are warriors, polygyny is generally diffused; but in a society compounded of such tribes, polygyny continues to characterize the militant part while monogamy begins to characterize the industrial part. This differentiation is foreshadowed even in the primitive militant tribe; since the least militant men fail to obtain more than one wife each. And it becomes marked when, in the growing population formed by compounding of tribes, there arises a division between warriors and workers. But there are more Edition: current; Page: [690] direct connexions between militancy and polygyny, which we shall recognize on recalling two facts named in the chapter on “Exogamy and Endogamy.” By members of savage communities, captured women are habitually taken as additional wives or concubines, and the reputations of warriors are enhanced in proportion to the numbers thus obtained (§ 305). As Mr. M‘Lennan points out, certain early peoples permitted foreign wives (presumably along with other wives) to the military class, though such wives were forbidden to other classes. Even among the Hebrews the laws authorized private appropriations of women taken in war (§ 308). The further direct connexion is the one implied in § 307; namely, that where loss of men in frequent battles leaves a great surplus of women, the possession of more wives than one by each man conduces to maintenance of population and preservation of the society. Hence continuance of polygyny is, under these circumstances, insured by those habitual conflicts, which, other things equal, entail the disappearance of societies not practising it. To which must be added the converse fact, that as fast as decreasing militancy and increasing devotion to industry cause an approximate equalization of the sexes in numbers, there results a growing resistance to polygyny; since it cannot be practised by many of the men without leaving many of the rest wifeless, and causing an antagonism inconsistent with social stability. Monogamy is thus to a great extent compelled by that balance of the sexes which industrialism brings about. Once more, the natural relation between polygyny and predominant militancy, and between monogamy and predominant industrialism, is shown by the fact that these two domestic forms harmonize in principle with the two associated political forms. We have seen that the militant type of social structure is based on the principle of compulsory co-operation. while the industrial type of social structure is based on the principle of voluntary co-operation. Now it is clear that plurality of wives, whether Edition: current; Page: [691] the wives are captured in war or purchased from their fathers regardless of their own wills, implies domestic rule of the compulsory type: the husband is tyrant and the wives are slaves. Conversely, the establishment of monogamy where fewer women are taken in war and fewer men lost in war, is accompanied by increased value of the individual woman; who, even when purchased, is therefore likely to be better treated. And when, with further advance, some power of choice is acquired by the woman, there is an approach to the voluntary co-operation which characterizes this marital relation in its highest form. The domestic despotism which polygyny involves, is congruous with the political despotism proper to predominant militancy; and the diminishing political coercion which naturally follows development of the industrial type, is congruous with the diminishing domestic coercion which naturally follows the accompanying development of monogamy. Probably the histories of European peoples will be cited against this view: the allegation being that, from Greek and Roman times downwards, these peoples, though militant, have been monogamic. The reply is that ancient European societies, though often engaged in wars, had large parts of their populations otherwise engaged, and had industrial systems characterized by much division of labour and commercial intercourse. Further, there must be remembered the fact that in northern Europe, during and after Roman times, while warfare was constant, monogamy was not universal. Tacitus admits the occurrence of polygyny among the German chiefs. Already we have seen, too, that the Merovingian kings were polygynists. Even the Carolingian period yields such facts as that—

And Kœnigswarter says that “such was the persistence of legal concubinage in the customs of the people that traces of it are found at Toulouse even in the thirteenth century.” To which let me add the startling fact that after the thirty years’ war had produced in Germany so immense a mortality of males, bigamy was for a time tolerated by law!

Thus, considering the many factors which have co-operated in modifying marital arrangements—considering also that some societies, becoming relatively peaceful, have long retained in large measure the structures acquired during previous greater militancy, while other societies which have considerably developed their industrial structures have again become predominantly militant, causing mixtures of traits; the alleged relations are, I think, as clear as can be expected. That advance from the primitive predatory type to the highest industrial type, has gone along with advance from prevalent polygyny to exclusive monogamy, is unquestionable; and that decline of militancy and rise of industrialism have been the essential causes of this change in the type of family, is shown by the fact that this change has occurred where such other supposable causes as culture, religious creed, etc., have not come into play.

§ 316. The domestic relations thus far dealt with mainly under their private aspects, have now to be dealt with under their public aspects. For, on the structure of the family, considered as a component of a society, depend various social phenomena.

The facts grouped in foregoing chapters show that no true conception of the higher types of family in their relations to the higher social types, can be obtained without previous study of the lower types of family in their relations to the lower social types. In this case, as in all other cases, error results when conclusions are drawn from the more complex products of evolution, in ignorance of the simpler products from which they have been derived. Already an instance Edition: current; Page: [693] has been furnished by the interpretations of primitive religions given by the reigning school of mythologists. Possessed by the ideas which civilization has evolved, and looking back on the ideas which prevailed among progenitors of the civilized races, they have used the more complex to interpret the less complex; and when forced to recognize the entire unlikeness between the inferred early religious ideas and the religious ideas found among the uncivilized who now exist, have assumed a fundamental difference in mode of action between the minds of the superior races and the minds of the inferior races: classing with the inferior, in pursuance of this assumption, such ancient races as the Accadians, to which the modern world is largely indebted for its present advance.

All who accept the conclusions set forth in the first part of this work, will see in this instance the error caused by analysis of the phenomena from above downwards, instead of synthesis of them from below upwards. They will see that in search of explanations we must go beneath the stage at which men had learnt to domesticate cattle and till the ground.

§ 317. These remarks are introductory to a criticism on the doctrines of Sir Henry Maine. While greatly valuing his works, and accepting as true within limits the views he has set forth respecting the family in its developed form, and respecting the part played by it in the evolution of European nations, it is possible to dissent from his assumptions concerning the earliest social states, and from the derived conceptions.

As leading to error, Sir Henry Maine censures “the lofty contempt which a civilized people entertains for barbarous neighbours,” which, he says, “has caused a remarkable negligence in observing them.” But he has not himself wholly escaped from the effects of this sentiment. While utilizing the evidence furnished by barbarous peoples belonging to the higher types of man, and while in some cases citing confirmatory Edition: current; Page: [694] evidence furnished by barbarous peoples of lower types, he has ignored the great mass of the uncivilized, and disregarded the multitudinous facts they present at variance with his theory. Though criticisms have led him somewhat to qualify the sweeping generalizations set forth in his Ancient Law—though, in the preface to its later editions, he refers to his subsequent work on Village Communities, as indicating some qualifications; yet the qualifications are but small, and in great measure hypothetical. He makes light of such adverse evidence as Mr. M‘Lennan and Sir John Lubbock give, on the ground that the part of it he deems most trustworthy is supplied by Indian Hill-tribes, which have, he thinks, been led into abnormal usages by the influences invading races have subjected them to. And though, in his Early Institutions, he says that “all branches of human society may or may not have been developed from joint families which arose out of an original patriarchal cell,” he clearly, by this form of expression, declines to admit that in many cases they have not been thus developed.

He rightly blames earlier writers for not exploring a sufficiently wide area of induction. But he has himself not made the area of induction wide enough; and that substitution of hypothesis for observed fact which he ascribes to his predecessors, is, as a consequence, to be noticed in his own work. Respecting the evidence available for framing generalizations, he says:—

And since, as exemplifying the “accounts by contemporary observers of civilizations less advanced than their own,” he names the account Tacitus gives of the Germans, and does not name the accounts modern travellers give of uncivilized races at large, he clearly does not include as evidence the Edition: current; Page: [695] statements made by these.* Let me name here two instances of the way in which this limitation leads to the substitution of hypothesis for observation.

Assuming that the patriarchal state is the earliest, Sir Henry Maine says that “the implicit obedience of rude men to their parent is doubtless a primary fact.” Now though among lower races, sons, while young, may be subordinate, from lack of ability to resist; yet that they remain subordinate when they become men, cannot be asserted as a uniform, and therefore as a primary, fact. On turning to § 35, it will be seen that obedience does not characterize all types of men. When we read that the Mantra “lives as if there were no other person in the world but himself;” that the Carib “is impatient under the least infringement” of his independence; that the Mapuché “brooks no command;” that the Brazilian Indian begins to display impatience of all restraint at puberty; we cannot conclude that filial submission is an original trait. When we are told that by the Gallinomeros, “old people are treated with contumely, both men and women,” and that by Shoshones and Araucanians, boys are not corrected for fear of destroying their spirit; we cannot suppose that subjection of adult sons to their fathers characterizes all types of men. When we learn that by the Navajos, “born and bred with the idea of perfect personal freedom, all restraint is unendurable,” and that among them “every father holds undisputed sway over his children until the age of puberty”—when we learn that among some Edition: current; Page: [696] Californians, children after puberty “were subject only to the chief,” that among the lower Californians, “as soon as children are able to get food for themselves they are left to their own devices,” and that among the Comanches male children “are even privileged to rebel against their parents, who are not entitled to chastise them but by consent of the tribe;” we are shown that in some races the parental and filial relation early comes to an end. Even the wilder members of the very race which has familiarized us with patriarchal government, yield like facts. Burckhardt says that “the young Bedouin” pays his father “some deference as long as he continues in his tent;” but “whenever he can become master of a tent himself . . . he listens to no advice, nor obeys any earthly command but that of his own will.” So far from showing that filial obedience is innate, and the patriarchal type a natural consequence, the evidence points rather to the inference that the two have evolved hand in hand under favouring conditions.

Again, referring to the way in which originally, common ancestral origin was the only ground for united social action, Sir Henry Maine says:—

Now if by “ancient societies” is meant those only of which records have come down to us, and if the “history of political ideas” is to include only the ideas of such societies, this may be true; but if we are to take account of societies more archaic than these, and to include other political ideas than those of Aryans and Semites, it cannot be sustained. Proof has been given (§§ 250-252) that political co-operation arises from the conflicts of social groups with one another. Though establishment of it may be facilitated where “the commonwealth is a collection of persons united by a common Edition: current; Page: [697] descent from the progenitor of an original family;” yet, in hosts of cases, it takes place where no connexion of this kind exists among the persons. The members of an Australian tribe which, under a temporary chief, join in battle against those of another tribe, have not a common descent, but are alien in blood. If it be said that political functions can here scarcely be alleged, then take the case of the Creeks of North America, whose men have various totems implying various ancestries, and whose twenty thousand people living in seventy villages have nevertheless evolved for themselves a government of considerable complexity. Or still better take the Iroquois, who, similar in their formation of tribes out of intermingled clans of different stocks, were welded by combined action in war into a league of five (afterwards six) nations under a republican government. Indeed early systems of kinship put relations in political antagonism; so that, as we read in Bancroft concerning the Kutchins, “there can never be inter-tribal war without ranging fathers and sons against each other.” Even apart from the results of mixed clanships, that instability which characterizes primitive relations of the sexes, negatives the belief that political co-operation everywhere originates from family co-operation: instance the above-named Creeks, of whom “a large portion of the old and middle-aged men, by frequently changing, have had many different wives, and their children, scattered around the country, are unknown to them.”

Thus finding reason to suspect that Sir Henry Maine’s theory of the family is not applicable to all societies, let us proceed to consider it more closely.

§ 318. He implies that in the earliest stages there were definite marital relations. That which he calls “the infancy of society”—“the situation in which mankind disclose themselves at the dawn of their history;” is a situation in which “ ‘every one exercises jurisdiction over his wives and his children, and they pay no regard to one another.’ ” But in Edition: current; Page: [698] the chapters on “The Primitive Relations of the Sexes,” on “Promiscuity,” and on “Polyandry,” I have cited numerous facts showing that definite coherent marital relations are preceded by indefinite incoherent ones; and also that among the types of family evolving out of these, there are some composed not of a man with wife and children, but of a wife with men and children: such being found not alone in societies of embryonic and infantine forms, but also in considerably advanced societies.

A further assumption is that descent has always and everywhere been in the male line. That it has from the recorded times of those peoples with whom Sir Henry Maine deals, may be true; and it is true that male descent occurs among some rude peoples of other types, as the Kookies of India, the Beluchis, the New Zealanders, the Hottentots. It is by no means the rule, however, among the uncivilized. Mr. M‘Lennan, who has pointed out the incongruity between this assumption and a great mass of evidence, shows that all over the world descent in the female line is common; and the many examples given by him I might, were it needful, enforce by others. This system is not limited to groups so little organized that they might be set aside as preinfantine (were that permissible); nor to groups which stand on a level with the patriarchal, or so-called infantine, societies in point of organization; but it occurs in groups, or rather nations, which have evolved complex structures. Kinship was through females in the two higher ranks of the Tahitians; and among the Tongans “nobility has always descended by the female line.” It was so with the ancient Chibchas, who had made no insignificant strides in civilization. Among the Iroquois, again, titles, as well as property, descended through women, and were hereditary in the woman’s tribe: the son could never succeed to his father’s title of sachem, nor inherit even his tomahawk; and these Iroquois had advanced far beyond the infantine stage—were governed by a representative assembly of fifty sachems, had a Edition: current; Page: [699] separate military organization, a separate ecclesiastical organization, definite laws, cultivated lands individually possessed, permanent fortified villages. So, too, in Africa, succession to rank and property follows the female line among the Coast-negroes, Inland-negroes, Congo people, etc.; who have distinct industrial systems, four and five gradations in rank, settled agricultures, considerable commerce, towns in streets. How misleading is the observation of a few societies only, is shown by Marsden’s remark respecting the Sumatrans of the Batta district. He says that “the succession to the chiefships does not go, in the first instance, to the son of the deceased, but to the nephew by a sister;” and adds “that the same extraordinary rule, with respect to property in general, prevails also amongst the Malays of that part of the island:” the rule which he considers “extraordinary,” being really, among the uncivilized and little civilized, the ordinary rule.

Again, Sir Henry Maine postulates the existence of government from the beginning—patriarchal authority over wife, children, slaves, and all who are included in the primitive social group. But in the chapters on “The Regulating System” and “Social Types,” I have shown that in various parts of the world there are social groups without heads; as the Fuegians, some Australians, most Esquimaux, the Arafuras, the Land Dyaks of the Upper Sarawak river; others with headships that are but occasional, as Tasmanians, some Australians, some Caribs, some Uaupès; and many with vague and unstable headships, as the Andamanese, Abipones, Snakes, Chippewayans, Chinooks, Chippewas, some Kamschadales, Guiana tribes, Mandans, Coroados, New Guinea people, Tannese. Though in some of these cases the communities are of the lowest, I see no adequate reason for excluding them from our conception of the “infancy of society.” And even saying nothing of these, we cannot regard as lower than infantine in their stages, those communities which, like the Upper Sarawak Dyaks, the Arafuras, Edition: current; Page: [700] the New Guinea people, carry on their peaceful lives without other government than that of public opinion and custom. Moreover, as we saw in § 250, the headship which exists in many simple groups is not patriarchal. Such chieftainship as arose among the Tasmanians in time of war, was determined by personal fitness. So, too, according to Edwards, with the Caribs, and according to Swan, with the Creeks. Then, still further showing that political authority does not always begin with patriarchal authority, we have the Iroquois, whose system of kinship negatived the genesis of patriarchs, and who yet developed a complex republican government; and we have the Pueblos, who, living in well-organized communities under elected governors and councils, show no signs of patriarchal rule in the past.

Another component of the doctrine is that originally, property is held by the family as a corporate body. According to Sir Henry Maine, “one peculiarity invariably distinguishing the infancy of society,” is that “men are regarded and treated not as individuals but always as members of the particular group.” The man was not “regarded as himself, as a distinct individual. His individuality was swallowed up in his family.” And this alleged primitive submergence of the individual, affected even the absolute ruler of the group. “Though the patriarch, for we must not yet call him the paterfamilias, had rights thus extensive, it is impossible to doubt that he lay under an equal amplitude of obligations. If he governed the family it was for its behoof. If he was lord of his possessions, he held them as trustee for his children and kindred . . . the family in fact was a corporation; and he was its representative.” Here, after expressing a doubt whether there exist in the primitive mind ideas so abstract as those of trusteeship and representation, I go on to remark that this hypothesis involves a conception difficult to frame. For while the patriarch is said to hold his possessions “in a representative rather than a proprietary character,” he is said to have unqualified dominion over children, Edition: current; Page: [701] as over slaves, extending to life and death; which implies that though he possesses the greater right of owning subordinate individuals absolutely, he does not possess the smaller right of owning absolutely the property used by them and himself. I may add that besides being difficult to frame, this conception is not easily reconcilable with Sir Henry Maine’s description of the Patria Potestas of the Romans, which he says is “our type of the primeval paternal authority,” and of which he remarks that while, during its decline, the father’s power over the son’s person became nominal, his “rights over the son’s property were always exercised without scruple.” And I may also name its seeming incongruity with the fact that political rulers who have unlimited powers over their subjects, are usually also regarded as in theory owners of their property: instance at the present time the kings of Dahomey, Ashanti, Congo, Cayor on the Gold Coast. Passing to the essential question, however, I find myself here at issue not with Sir Henry Maine only, but with other writers on primitive social states, who hold that all ownership is originally tribal, that family-ownership comes later, and ownership by individuals last. As already implied in § 292, the evidence leads me to believe that from the beginning there has been individual ownership of such things as could without difficulty be appropriated. True though it is that in early stages rights of property are indefinite—certain though it may be that among primitive men the moral sanction which property equitably obtained has among ourselves, is lacking—obvious as we find it that possession is often established by right of the strongest; the facts prove that in the rudest communities there is a private holding of useful movables, maintained by each man to the best of his ability. A personal monopoly extends itself to such things as can readily be monopolized. The Tinneh who, “regarding all property, including wives, as belonging to the strongest,” show in a typical way the primitive form of appropriation, also show that this appropriation Edition: current; Page: [702] is completely personal; since they “burn with the deceased all his effects.” Indeed, even apart from evidence, it seems to me an inadmissible supposition that in “the infancy of society” the egoistic savage, utterly without idea of justice or sense of responsibility, consciously held his belongings on behalf of those depending upon him.

One more element, indirectly if not directly involved in the doctrine of Sir Henry Maine, is that “the infancy of society” is characterized by the perpetual tutelage of women. While each male descendant has a capacity “to become himself the head of a new family and the root of a new set of parental powers,” “a woman of course has no capacity of the kind, and no title accordingly to the liberation which it confers. There is therefore a peculiar contrivance of archaic jurisprudence for retaining her in the bondage of the family for life.” And the implication appears to be that this slavery of women, derived from the patriarchal state, and naturally accompanied by inability to hold property, has been slowly mitigated, and the right of private possession acquired, as the primitive family has decayed. But when we pass from the progenitors of the civilized races to existing uncivilized races, we meet with facts requiring us to qualify this proposition. Though in rude societies entire subjection of women is the rule, yet there are exceptions; both in societies lower than the patriarchal in organization, and in higher societies which bear no traces of a past patriarchal state. Among the Kocch, who are mainly governed by “juries of elders,” “when a woman dies the family property goes to her daughters.” In tribes of the Karens, whose chiefs, of little authority, are generally elective and often wanting, “the father wills his property to his children. . . . Nothing is given to the widow, but she is entitled to the use of the property till her death.” Of the Khasias, Steel says that “the house belongs to the woman; and in case of the husband dying or being separated from her, it remains her property.” Among the Sea-Dyaks, whose law of inheritance Edition: current; Page: [703] is not that of primogeniture, and whose chieftainships, where they exist, are acquired by merit, as the wife does an equal share of work with her husband, “at a divorce she is entitled to half the wealth created by their mutual [joint] labours;” and Brooke writes of certain Land-Dyaks, that “the most powerful of the people in the place were two old ladies, who often told me that all the land and inhabitants belonged to them.” North America furnishes kindred facts. In the Aleutian Islands “rich women are permitted to indulge in two husbands;” ownership of property by females being implied. Among the Nootkas, in case of divorce there is “a strict division of property”—the wife taking both what she brought and what she has made; and similarly among the Spokanes, “all household goods are considered as the wife’s property,” and there is an equitable division of property on dissolution of marriage. Again, of the Iroquois, who, considerably advanced as we have seen, were shown by their still-surviving system of descent in the female line, never to have passed through the patriarchal stage, we read that the proprietary rights of husband and wife remained distinct; and further, that in case of separation the children went with the mother. Still more striking is the instance supplied by the peaceful, industrious, freely-governed Pueblos; whose women, otherwise occupying good positions, not only inherit property, but, in some cases, make exclusive claims to it. Africa, too, where the condition of women is in most respects low, but where descent in the female line continues, furnishes examples. In Timbuctoo a son’s share of the father’s property is double that of a daughter. Above the Yellala falls on the Congo, fowls, eggs, manioc, and fruits, “seem all to belong to the women, the men never disposing of them without first consulting their wives, to whom the beads are given.”

Thus many things are at variance with the theory which assumes that “the infancy of society” is exhibited in the patriarchal group. As was implied in the chapters on tho “Primitive Relations of the Sexes,” on “Promiscuity,” on Edition: current; Page: [704] “Polyandry,” the earliest societies were without domestic organization as they were without political organization. Instead of a paternally-governed cluster, at once family and rudimentary State, there was at first an aggregate of males and females without settled arrangements, and having no relations save those established by force and changed when the stronger willed.

§ 319. And here we come in face of the fact before obliquely glanced at, that Sir Henry Maine’s hypothesis takes account of no stages in human progress earlier than the pastoral or agricultural. The groups he describes as severally formed of the patriarch, his wife, descendants, slaves, flocks, and herds, are groups implying domesticated animals of several kinds. But before the domestication of animals was achieved, there passed long stages stretching back through pre-historic times. To understand the patriarchal group, we must inquire how it grew out of the less-organized groups which preceded it.

The answer is not difficult to find if we ask what kind of life the domestication of herbivorous animals entails. Where pasture is abundant and covers large areas, the keeping of flocks and herds does not necessitate separation of their owners into very small clusters: instance the Comanches, who, with their hunting, join the keeping of cattle, which the members of the tribe combine to guard. But where pasture is not abundant, or is distributed in patches, many cattle cannot be kept together; and their owners consequently have to part. Naturally, division of the owners will be into such clusters as are already vaguely marked off in the original aggregate. Individual men with such women as they have taken possession of, such animals as they have acquired by force or otherwise, and all their other belongings, will wander hither and thither in search of food for their sheep and oxen. As already pointed out, we have, in prepastoral stages, as among the Bushmen, cases where scarcity Edition: current; Page: [705] of wild food necessitates parting into very small groups, usually single families; and clearly when, instead of game and vermin to be caught, cattle have to be fed, the distribution of pasturage, here in larger oases and there in smaller ones, will determine the numbers of animals, and consequently of human beings, which can keep together. In the separation of Abraham and Lot we have a traditional illustration.

Thus recognizing the natural origin of the wandering family-group, let us ask what are likely to become its traits. We have seen that the regulating system of a society is evolved by conflicts with environing societies. Between pastoral hordes which have become separate, and in course of time alien, there must arise, as between other groups, antagonisms: caused sometimes by appropriations of strayed cattle, sometimes by encroachments upon grazing areas monopolized. But now mark a difference. In a tribe of archaic type, such ascendancy as war from time to time gives to a man who is superior in strength, will, or cunning, commonly fails to become a permanent headship (§ 250); since his power is regarded with jealousy by men who are in other respects his equals. It is otherwise in the pastoral horde. The tendency which war between groups has to evolve a head in each group, here finds a member prepared for the place. Already there is the father, who at the outset was by right of the strong hand, leader, owner, master, of wife, children, and all he carried with him. In the preceding stage his actions were to some extent kept in check by other men of the tribe; now they are not. His sons could early become hunters and carry on their lives independently; now they cannot.

Note a second difference. Separation from other men brings into greater clearness the fact that the children are not only his wife’s children, but his children; and further, since among its neighbours his group is distinguished by his name, the children spoken of as members of his group are otherwise spoken of as his children. The establishment of Edition: current; Page: [706] male descent is thus facilitated. Simultaneously there is apt to come acknowledged supremacy of the eldest son. The first to give aid to the father; the first to reach manhood; the first likely to marry and have children; he is usually the one on whom the powers of the father devolve as he declines and dies. Hence the average tendency through successive generations will be for the eldest male to become head of the increasing group; alike as family ruler and political ruler—the patriarch.

At the same time industrial co-operation is fostered. Savages of the lowest types get roots and berries, shell-fish, vermin, small animals, etc., without joint action. Among those who have reached the advanced hunting stage and capture large animals, a considerable combination is implied, though of an irregular kind. But on rising to the stage in which flocks and herds have to be daily pastured and guarded, and their products daily utilized, combined actions of many kinds are necessitated; and under the patriarchal rule these become regularized by apportionment of duties. This co-ordination of functions and consequent mutual dependence of parts, conduces to consolidation of the group as an organic whole. Gradually it becomes impracticable for any member to live by himself: deprived not only of the family aid and protection, but of the food and clothing yielded by the domesticated animals. So that the industrial arrangements conspire with the governmental arrangements to produce a well-compacted aggregate, internally coherent and externally marked off definitely from other aggregates.

This process is furthered by disappearance of the less-developed. Other things equal, those groups which are most subordinate to their leaders will succeed best in battle. Other things equal, those which, submitting to commands longer, have grown into larger groups, will also thus benefit. And other things equal, advantages will be gained by those in which, under dictation of the patriarch, industrial co-operation has been rendered efficient. So that by survival Edition: current; Page: [707] of the fittest among pastoral groups struggling for existence with one another, those which obedience to their heads and mutual dependence of parts have made the strongest, will be those to spread; and in course of time the patriarchal type will thus become well marked. Not, indeed, that entire disappearance of less-organized groups must result; since regions favourable to the process described, facilitate survival of a few smaller hordes, pursuing lives more predatory and less pastoral.

Mark next how, under these circumstances, there arise certain arrangements respecting ownership. That division of goods which is pre-supposed by individualization of property, cannot be carried far without appliances unknown to savage life. Measures of time, measures of quantity, measures of value, are required. When, from the primitive appropriation of things found, caught, or made, we pass to the acquisition of things by barter and by service, we see that approximate equality of value between the exchanged things is implied; and in the absence of recognized equivalence, which must be exceptional, there will be great resistance to barter. Among savages, therefore, property extends but little beyond the things a man can produce for himself. Kindred obstacles occur in the pastoral group. How can the value of the labour contributed by each to the common weal be measured? To-day the cowherd can feed his cattle close at hand; to-morrow he must drive them far and get back late. Here the shepherd tends his flock in rich pasture; and in a region next visited the sheep disperse in search of scanty food, and he has great trouble in getting in the strayed ones. No accounts of labour spent by either can be kept; nor are there current rates of wages to give ideas of their respective claims to shares of produce. The work of the daughter or the bond-woman, who milks and who fetches water, now from a well at hand and now from one further off, varies from day to day; and its worth, as compared with the worths of other works, cannot be known. Edition: current; Page: [708] So with the preparation of skins, the making of clothing, the setting up of tents. All these miscellaneous services, differing in arduousness, duration, skill, cannot be paid for in money or produce while there exists neither currency nor market in which the relative values of articles and labours may be established by competition. Doubtless a bargain for services rudely estimated as worth so many cattle or sheep, may be entered into. But beyond the fact that this form of payment, admitting of but very rough equivalence, cannot conveniently be carried out with all members of the group, there is the fact that even supposing it to be carried out, the members of the group cannot separately utilize their respective portions. The sheep have to be herded together: it would never do to send them out in small divisions, each requiring its attendant. Milk must be dealt with in the mass—could not without great loss of labour be taken by so many separate milkmaids and treated afterwards in separate portions. So is it throughout. The members of the group naturally fall into the system of giving their respective labours and satisfying from the produce their respective wants. The patriarch, at once family-head, director of industry, owner of the group and its belongings, regulates the labour of its dependents; and, maintaining them out of the common stock which results, is restrained in his distribution, as in his conduct at large, only by custom and by the prospect of resistance and secession if he disregards too far the average opinion.

The mention of secession introduces a remaining trait of the patriarchal group. Small societies, mostly at enmity with surrounding societies, are anxious to increase the numbers of their men that they may be stronger for war. Hence not infrequently female infanticide, to facilitate the rearing of males; hence in some places, as in parts of Africa, a woman is forgiven any amount of irregularity if she bears many children; hence the fact that among the Hebrews barrenness was a reproach. This wish to strengthen itself by Edition: current; Page: [709] adding to its fighting members, leads each group to welcome fugitives from other groups. Everywhere and in all times, there goes on desertion—sometimes of rebels, sometimes of criminals. Stories of feudal ages, telling of knights and men-at-arms who, being ill-treated or in danger of punishment, escape and take service with other princes or nobles, remind us of what goes on at the present day in various parts of Africa, where the dependents of a chief who treats them too harshly leave him and join some neighbouring chief, and of what goes on among such wandering tribes as the Coroados, members of which join now one horde and now another as impulse prompts. And that with pastoral peoples the like occurs, we have direct evidence. Pallas tells us of the Kalmucks and Mongols that men oppressed by their chief, desert and go to other chiefs. Occasionally occurring everywhere, this fleeing from tribe to tribe entails ceremonies of incorporation if the stranger is of fit rank and worth—exchange of names, mingling or portions of blood, etc.—by which he is supposed to be made one in nature with those he has joined. What happens when the group, instead of being of the hunting type, is of the patriarchal type? Adoption into the tribe now becomes adoption into the family. The two being one—the family being otherwise called, as in Hebrew, “the tent”—political incorporation is the same thing as domestic incorporation. And adoption into the family, thus established as a sequence of primitive adoption into the tribe, long persists in the derived societies when its original meaning is lost.

And now to test this interpretation. Distinct in nature as are sundry races leading pastoral lives, we find that they have evolved this social type when subject to these particular conditions. That it was the type among early Semites does not need saying: they, in fact, having largely served to exemplify its traits. That the Aryans during their nomadic stage displayed it, is implied by the account given above of Sir Henry Maine’s investigations and inferences. We find it Edition: current; Page: [710] again among the Mongolian peoples of Asia; and again among wholly alien peoples inhabiting South Africa. Of the Hottentots, who, exclusively pastoral, differ from the neighbouring Bechuanas and Kaffirs in not cultivating the soil at all, we learn that all estates “descend to the eldest son, or, where a son is wanting, to the next male relation;” and an eldest son may after his father’s death retain his brothers and sisters in a sort of slavery. Note, too, that among the neighbouring Damaras, who, also exclusively pastoral, are unlike in the respect that kinship in the female line still partially survives, patriarchal organization, whether of the family or the tribe, is but little developed, and the subordination small; and further, that among the Kaffirs, who though in large measure pastoral are partly agricultural, patriarchal rule, private and public, is qualified.

It would be unsafe to say that under no other conditions than those of the pastoral state, does this family-type occur. We have no proof that it may not arise along with a direct transition from the hunting life to the agricultural life. But it seems that usually this direct transition is accompanied by a different set of changes. Where, as in Polynesia, pastoral life has been impossible, or where, as in Peru and Mexico, we have no reason to suppose that it ever existed, the political and domestic arrangements, still characterized much or little by the primitive system of descent in the female line, have acquired qualified forms of male descent and its concomitant arrangements; but they appear to have done so under pressure of the influences which habitual militancy maintains. We have an indication of this in Gomara’s statement respecting the Peruvians, that “nephews inherit, and not sons, except in the case of the Yncas.” Still better are we shown it by sundry African states. Among the Coast Negroes, whose kinships are ordinarily through females, and whose various societies, variously governed, are most of them very unstable, male descent has been established in some of the kingdoms. The Inland Negroes, too, similarly Edition: current; Page: [711] retaining as a rule descent in the female line, alike in the State and in the family, have acquired in their public and private arrangements, some traits akin to those derived from the patriarchal system; and the like is the case in Congo. Further, in the powerful kindgom of Dahomey, where the monarchy has become stable and absolute, male succession and primogeniture are completely established, and in the less-despotically governed Ashanti, partially established.

But whether the patriarchal type of family does or does not arise under other conditions, we may safely say that the pastoral life is most favourable to development of it. From the general laws of evolution it is a corollary that there goes on integration of any group of like units, simultaneously exposed to forces that are like in kind, amount, and direction (First Principles, §§ 163, 168); and obviously, the members of a wandering family, kept together by joint interests and jointly in antagonism with other such families, will become more integrated than the members of a family associated with other families in a primitive tribe; since in this the joint interests are largely tribal. Just as a larger social aggregate becomes coherent by the co-operation of its members in conflict with neighbouring like aggregates; so does this smallest social aggregate constituted by the nomadic horde. Of the differentiations which simultaneously arise, the same may be said. As the government of a larger society is evolved during its struggles with other such societies; so is the government of this smallest society. And as here the society and the family are one, the development of the regulative structure of the society becomes the development of the regulative family-structure. Moreover, analogy suggests that the higher organization given by this discipline to the family-group, makes it a better component of societies afterwards formed, than are family-groups which have not passed through this discipline. Already we have seen that great nations arise only by aggregation and reaggregation. Edition: current; Page: [712] Small communities have first to acquire some consolidation and structure; then they admit of union into compound communities, which, when well integrated, may again be compounded into still larger communities; and so on. It now appears that social evolution is most favoured when this process begins with the smallest groups—the families: such groups, made coherent and definite in the way described, and afterwards compounded and re-compounded, having originated the highest societies.

An analogy between social organisms and individual organisms supports this inference. In a passage from which I have already quoted a clause, Sir Henry Maine, using a metaphor which biology furnishes, says:—“All branches of human society may or may not have been developed from joint families which arose out of an original patriarchal cell; but, wherever the Joint Family is an institution of an Aryan race, we see it springing from such a cell, and, when it dissolves, we see it dissolving into a number of such cells:” thus implying that as the cell is the proximate component of the individual organism, so the family is the proximate component of the social organism. In either case, however, this, though generally true, is not entirely true; and the qualification required is extremely suggestive. Low down in the animal kingdom exist creatures not possessing definite cell-structure—small portions of living protoplasm without limiting membranes and even without nuclei. There are also certain types produced by aggregation of these; and though it is now alleged that the individual components of one of the compound Foraminifera have nuclei, yet they have none of the definiteness of developed cells. In types above these, however, it is otherwise: every cœlenterate, molluscous, annulose, or vertebrate animal, begins as a cluster of distinct, nucleated cells. Whence it would seem that the undifferentiated portion of protoplasm constituting the lowest animal, cannot, by union with others such, furnish the basis for a higher animal; and that the simplest aggregates Edition: current; Page: [713] have to become definitely developed before they can form by combination larger aggregates capable of much development. Similarly with societies. Tribes in which the family is vague and unsettled remain politically rude. Sundry partially-civilized peoples characterized by some definiteness and coherence of family structure, have attained corresponding heights of social structure. And the highest organizations have been reached by nations compounded out of family groups which had previously become well organized.

§ 320. And now, limiting our attention to these highest societies, we have to thank Sir Henry Maine for showing us the ways in which many of their ideas, customs, laws, and arrangements, have been derived from those which characterized the patriarchal group.

In all cases habits of life, when continued for many generations, mould the nature; and the resulting traditional beliefs and usages with the accompanying sentiments, become difficult to change. Hence, on passing from the wandering pastoral life to the settled agricultural life, the patriarchal type of family with its established traits, persisted, and gave its stamp to the social structures which gradually arose. As Sir Henry Maine says—“All the larger groups which make up the primitive societies in which the patriarchal family occurs, are seen to be multiplications of it, and to be, in fact, themselves more or less formed on its model.” The divisions which result become distinct in various degrees. “In the joint undivided family of the Hindoos, the stirpes, or stocks, which are only known to European law as branches of inheritors, are actual divisions of the family, and live together in distinct parts of the common dwelling;” and similarly in some parts of Europe. In the words of another writer—“The Bulgarians, like the Russian peasantry, adhere to the old patriarchal method, and fathers and married sons, with their children and children’s children, live under the same roof until the grandfather dies. Edition: current; Page: [714] As each son in his turn gets married, a new room is added to the old building, until with the new generation there will often be twenty or thirty people living under the same roof, all paying obedience and respect to the head of the family.” Further multiplication produces the village community; in which the households, and in part the landed properties, have become distinct. And then where larger populations arise, and different stocks are locally mingled, there are formed such groups within groups as those constituting among the Romans, the family, the house, and the tribe: common ancestry being in all cases the bond.

Along with persistence of patriarchal structures under new conditions, goes persistence of patriarchal principles. There is supremacy of the oldest male; sometimes continuing, as in Roman Law, to the extent of life and death power over wife and children. There long survives, too, the general idea that the offences of the individual are the offences of the group to which he belongs; and, as a consequence, there survives the practice of holding the group responsible and inflicting punishment upon it. There come the system of agnatic kinship, and the adapted laws of inheritance. And there develops the ancestor-worship in which there join groups of family, house, tribe, etc., that are large in proportion as the ancestor is remote. These results, however, here briefly indicated, do not now concern us: they have to be treated of more as social phenomena than as domestic phenomena.

But with one further general truth which Sir Henry Maine brings into view, we are concerned—the disintegration of the family. “The unit of an ancient society was the Family,” he says, and “of a modern society the Individual.” Now excluding those archaic types of society in which, as we have seen, the family is undeveloped, this generalization appears to be amply supported by facts; and it is one of profound importance. If, recalling the above suggestions respecting the genesis of the patriarchal family, we ask what must Edition: current; Page: [715] happen when the causes which joined in forming it are replaced by causes working in an opposite way, we shall understand why this change has taken place. In the lowest groups, while there continues co-operation in war and the chase among individuals belonging to different stocks, the family remains vague and incoherent, and the individual is the unit. But when the imperfectly-formed families with the domestic animals severally become distinct groups—when the co-operations carried on are between individuals domestically related as well as socially related, then the family becomes defined, compact, organized; and its controlling agency gains strength because it is at once parental and political. This organization which the pastoral group gets by being at once family and society, and which is gradually perfected by conflict and survival of the fittest, it carries into settled life. But settled life entails multiplication into numerous such groups adjacent to one another; and in these changed circumstances, each of the groups is sheltered from some of the actions which originated its organization, and exposed to other actions which tend to disorganize it. Though there still arise quarrels among the multiplying families, yet, as their blood-relationship is now a familiar thought, which persists longer than it would have done had they wandered away from one another generation after generation, the check to antagonism is greater. Further, the worship of a common ancestor, in which they can now more readily join at settled intervals, acts as a restraint on their hatreds, and so holds them together. Again, the family is no longer liable to be separately attacked by enemies, but a number of adjacent families are simultaneously invaded and simultaneously resist: co-operation among them is induced. Throughout subsequent stages of social growth this co-operation increases; and the families jointly exposed to like external forces tend to integrate. Already we have seen that by a kindred process such communities as tribes, as feudal lordships, as small kingdoms, become united into Edition: current; Page: [716] larger communities; and that along with the union caused by co-operation, primarily for offence and defence and subsequently for other purposes, there goes a gradual obliteration of the divisions between them, and a substantial fusion. Here we recognize the like process as taking place with these smallest groups. Quite harmonizing with this general interpretation are the special interpretations which Sir Henry Maine gives of the decline of the Patria Potestas among the Romans. He points out how father and son had to perform their civil and military functions on a footing of equality wholly unlike their domestic footing; and how the consequent separate acquisition of authority, power, spoils, etc., by the son, gradually undermined the paternal despotism. Individuals of the family, no longer working together only in their unlike relations to one another, and coming to work together under like relations to State-authority and to enemies, the public co-operation and subordination grew at the expense of the private co-operation and subordination. And in the large aggregates eventually formed, industrial activities as well as militant activities conduced to this result. In his work Through Bosnia and the Herzegóvina, Mr. Evans, describing the Sclavonic house-communities, which are dissolving under the stress of industrial competition, says—“The truth is, that the incentives to labour and economy are weakened by the sense of personal interest in their results being sub-divided.”

And now let us note the marvellous parallel between the change in the structure of the social organism and a change in the structure of the individual organism. We saw that definite nucleated cells are the components which, by aggregation, lay the foundations of the higher organisms; in the same way that the well-developed simple patriarchal groups are those out of which, by composition, the higher societies are eventually evolved. Here let me add that as, in the higher individual organisms, the aggregated cells which form the embryo, and for some time retain their separateness, gradually give place to structures in which the cell-form is Edition: current; Page: [717] masked and almost lost; so in the social organism, the family groups and compound family groups which were the original components, eventually lose their distinguishableness, and there arise structures formed of mingled individuals belonging to many different stocks.

§ 321. A question of great interest, which has immediate bearings on policy, remains—Is there any limit to this disintegration of the family?

Already in the more advanced nations, that process which dissolved the larger family-aggregates, dissipating the tribe and the gens and leaving only the family proper, has long been completed; and already there have taken place partial disintegrations of the family proper. Along with changes which substituted individual responsibility for family responsibility in respect of offences, have gone changes which, in some degree, have absolved the family from responsibility for its members in other respects. When by Poor Laws public provision was made for children whom their parents did not or could not adequately support, society in so far assumed family-functions; as also when undertaking, in a measure, the charge of parents not supported by their children. Legislation has of late further relaxed family-bonds by relieving parents from the care of their children’s minds, and replacing education under parental direction by education under governmental direction; and where the appointed authorities have found it needful partially to clothe neglected children before they could be taught, and even to whip children by police agency for not going to school,* they have still further substituted national responsibility for the responsibility of parents. This recognition of the individual, rather than the family, as the social unit, has indeed now gone so far that by many the paternal duty of the State is assumed as self-evident; and criminals are called “our failures.”

Are these disintegrations of the family parts of a normal progress? Are we on our way to a condition like that reached by sundry Socialist bodies in America and elsewhere? in these, along with community of property, and along with something approaching to community of wives, there goes community in the care of offspring: the family is entirely disintegrated. We have made sundry steps towards such an organization. Is the taking of those which remain only a matter of time?

To this question a distinct answer is furnished by those biological generalizations with which we set out. In Chap. II were indicated the facts that, with advance towards the highest animal types, there goes increase of the period during which offspring are cared for by parents; that in the human race parental care, extending throughout childhood, becomes elaborate as well as prolonged; and that among the highest members of the highest races, it continues into early manhood: providing numerous aids to material welfare, taking precautions for moral discipline, and employing complex agencies for intellectual culture. Moreover, we saw that along with this lengthening and strengthening of the solicitude of parent for child, there grows up a reciprocal solicitude of child for parent. Among even the highest animals of sub-human types, this aid and protection of parents by offspring is absolutely wanting. In the lower human races it is but feebly marked—aged fathers and mothers being here killed and there left to die of starvation; and it becomes gradually more marked as we advance to the highest civilized races. Are we in the course of further evolution to reverse all this? Have those parental and filial bonds which have been growing closer and stronger during the latter stages of organic development, become untrustworthy? and is the social bond to be trusted in place of them? Are the intense feelings which have made the fulfilment of parental duties a source of high pleasure, to be now regarded as valueless; and is the sense of public duty to children at large, to be cultivated Edition: current; Page: [719] by each man and woman as a sentiment better and more efficient than the parental instincts and sympathies? Possibly Father Noyes and his disciples at Oneida Creek, will say Yes, to each of these questions; but probably few others will join in the Yes—even of the many who are in consistency bound to join.

So far from expecting disintegration of the family to go further, we have reason to suspect that it has already gone too far. Probably the rhythm of change, conforming to its usual law, has carried us from the one extreme a long way towards the other extreme; and a return movement is to be looked for. A suggestive parallel may be named. In early stages the only parental and filial kinship formally recognized was that of mother and child; after which, in the slow course of progress was reached the doctrine of exclusive male kinship—the kinship of child to mother being ignored; after which there came, in another long period, the establishment of kinship to both. Similarly, from a state in which family-groups were alone recognized and individuals ignored, we are moving towards an opposite state in which ignoring of the family and recognition of the individual goes to the extreme of making, not the mature individual only, the social unit, but also the immature individual; from which extreme we may expect a recoil towards that medium state in which there has been finally lost the compound family-group, while there is a renovation of the family-group proper, composed of parents and offspring.

§ 322. And here we come in sight of a truth on which politicians and philanthropists would do well to ponder. The salvation of every society, as of every species, depends on the maintenance of an absolute opposition between the regime of the family and the regime of the State.

To survive, every species of creature must fulfil two conflicting requirements. During a certain period each member must receive benefits in proportion to its incapacity. After Edition: current; Page: [720] that period, it must receive benefits in proportion to its capacity. Observe the bird fostering its young or the mammal rearing its litter, and you see that imperfection and inability are rewarded; and that as ability increases, the aid given in food and warmth becomes less. Obviously this law that the least worthy shall receive most aid, is essential as a law for the immature: the species would disappear in a generation did not parents conform to it. Now mark what is, contrariwise, the law for the mature. Here individuals gain benefits proportionate to their merits. The strong, the swift, the keen-sighted, the sagacious, profit by their respective superiorities—catch prey or escape enemies as the case may be. The less capable thrive less, and on the average of cases rear fewer offspring. The least capable disappear by failure to get food or from inability to escape. And by this process is maintained that quality of the species which enables it to survive in the struggle for existence with other species. There is thus, during mature life, a reversal of the principle that ruled during immature life.

Already we have seen that a society stands to its citizens in the same relation as a species to its members (§ 277); and the truth which we have just seen holds of the one holds of the other. The law for the undeveloped is that there shall be most aid where there is least merit. The helpless, useless infant, extremely exigeant, must from hour to hour be fed, kept warm, amused, exercised. As fast as, during childhood and boyhood, the powers of self-preservation increase, the attentions required and given become less perpetual, but still have to be great. Only with approach to maturity, when some value and efficiency have been acquired, is this policy considerably qualified. But when the young man enters into the battle of life, he is dealt with after a contrary system. The general principle now is that his reward shall be proportioned to his value. Though parental aid, not abruptly ending, may soften the effects of this social law, yet the mitigation of them is but slight; and, apart from parental Edition: current; Page: [721] aid, this social law is but in a small degree traversed by private generosity. Then in subsequent years when parental aid has ceased, the stress of the struggle becomes greater, and the adjustment of prosperity to efficiency more rigorous. Clearly with a society, as with a species, survival depends on conformity to both of these antagonist principles. Import into the family the law of the society, and let children from infancy upwards have life-sustaining supplies proportioned to their life-sustaining labours, and the society disappears forthwith by death of all its young. Import into the society the law of the family, and let the life-sustaining supplies be great in proportion as the life-sustaining labours are small, and the society decays from increase of its least worthy members and decrease of its most worthy members. It fails to hold its own in the struggle with other societies, which allow play to the natural law that prosperity shall vary as efficiency.

Hence the necessity of maintaining this cardinal distinction between the ethics of the Family and the ethics of the State. Hence the fatal result if family disintegration goes so far that family-policy and state-policy become confused. Unqualified generosity must remain the principle of the family while offspring are passing through their early stages; and generosity increasingly qualified by justice, must remain its principle as offspring are approaching maturity. Conversely, the principle of the society, guiding the acts of citizens to one another, must ever be, justice, qualified by such generosity as their several natures prompt; joined with unqualified justice in the corporate acts of the society to its members. However fitly in the battle of life among adults, the proportioning of rewards to merits may be tempered by private sympathy in favour of the inferior; nothing but evil can result if this proportioning is so interfered with by public arrangements, that demerit profits at the expense of merit.

§ 323. And now to sum up the several conclusions, related Edition: current; Page: [722] though heterogeneous, to which our survey of the family has brought us.

That there are connexions between polygyny and the militant type and between monogamy and the industrial type, we found good evidence. Partly the relation between militancy and polygyny is entailed by the stealing of women in war; and partly it is entailed by the mortality of males and resulting surplus of females where war is constant. In societies advanced enough to have some industrial organization, the militant classes remain polygynous, while the industrial classes become generally monogamous; and an ordinary trait of the despotic ruler, evolved by habitual militancy, is the possession of many wives. Further, we found that even in European history this relation, at first not manifest, is to be traced. Conversely, it was shown that with development of industrialism and consequent approach to equality of the sexes in numbers, monogamy becomes more general, because extensive polygyny is rendered impracticable. We saw, too, that there is a congruity between that compulsory co-operation which is the organizing principle of the militant type of society, and that compulsory co-operation characterizing the polygynous household; while with the industrial type of society, organized on the principle of voluntary co-operation, there harmonizes that monogamic union which voluntary domestic co-operation presupposes. Lastly, these relationships were clearly shown by the remarkable fact that in different parts of the world, among different races, there are simple societies in other respects unadvanced, which, quite exceptional in being peaceful, are also exceptional in being monogamic.

Passing to the social aspects of the family, we examined certain current theories. These imply that in the beginning there were settled marital relations, which we have seen is not the fact; that there was at first descent in the male line, which the evidence disproves; that in the earliest groups there was definite subordination to a head, which is not a Edition: current; Page: [723] sustainable proposition. Further, the contained assumptions that originally there was an innate sentiment of filial obedience, giving a root for patriarchal authority, and that originally family connexion afforded the only reason for political combination, are at variance with accounts given us of the uncivilized. Recognizing the fact that to understand the higher forms of the family we must trace them up from those lowest forms accompanying the lowest social state, we saw how, in a small separated group of persons old and young, held together by some kinship, there was, under the circumstances of pastoral life, an establishing of male descent, an increasing of cohesion, of subordination, of co-operation, industrial and defensive; and that acquirement of structure became relatively easy, because domestic government and social government became identical. Hence the genesis of a simple society more developed than all preceding simple societies, and better fitted for the composition of higher societies.

Thus originated under special conditions, the patriarchal group with its adapted ideas, sentiments, customs, arrangements, dividing in successive generations into sub-groups which, held together in larger or smaller clusters according as the environment favoured, carried its organization with it into the settled state; and the efficient co-ordination evolved within it, favoured efficient co-ordination of the larger societies formed by aggregation. Though, as we are shown by partially-civilized kingdoms existing in Africa and by extinct American kingdoms, primitive groups of less evolved structures and characterized by another type of family, may form compound societies of considerable size and complexity; yet the patriarchal group with its higher family-type is inductively proved to be that out of which the largest and most advanced societies arise.

Into communities produced by multiplication of it, the patriarchal group, carrying its supremacy of the eldest male, its system of inheritance, its laws of property, its joint Edition: current; Page: [724] worship of the common ancestor, its blood-feud, its complete subjection of women and children, long retains its individuality. But with these communities as with communities otherwise constituted, combined action slowly leads to fusion; the lines of division become gradually less marked; and at length, as Sir Henry Maine shows, societies which have the family for their unit of composition pass into societies which have the individual for their unit of composition.

This disintegration, first separating compound family groups into simpler ones, eventually affects the simplest: the members of the family proper, more and more acquire individual claims and individual responsibilities. And this wave of change, conforming to the general law of rhythm, has in modern nations partially dissolved the relations of domestic life and substituted for them the relations of social life. Not simply have the individual claims and responsibilities of young adults in each family, come to be recognized by the State; but the State has, to a considerable degree, usurped the parental functions in respect of children, and, assuming their claims upon it, exercises coercion over them.

On looking back to the general laws of life, however, and observing the essential contrast between the principle of family life and the principle of social life, we conclude that this degree of family disintegration is in excess, and will hereafter be followed by partial re-integration.