Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/284

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

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 increase of industrialness 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 coöperation which is the organizing principle of the militant type of society, and that compulsory coöperation characterizing the polygynous household; while with the industrial type of society, organized on the principle of voluntary coöperation, there harmonizes that monogamic union which is an essential condition to voluntary domestic coöperation. Lastly, these relationships were clearly shown by the remarkable fact that, in different parts of the world, among different races, there are primitive societies in other respects unadvanced, which, exceptional in being peaceful and industrial, are also exceptional in being monogamic.

Passing to the consideration of the family under its social aspects, 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 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 connection afforded the only reason for political combination, are at variance with accounts given us of the uncivilized. Recognizing the fact that if we are fully 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 coöperation, industrial and defensive; and that acquirement of structure became relatively easy because domestic government and social government became identical: the influences favoring each conspiring instead of conflicting. Hence the genesis of a simple society more developed than all preceding simple societies, and better fitted for the composition of higher societies.

Thus naturally originating under special conditions, the patriarchal group with its adapted ideas, sentiments, customs, arrangements, dividing in successive generations into sub-groups holding together in larger or smaller clusters according as the environment favored, carried its organization with it into the settled state; and the efficient coördination evolved within it favored efficient coördination of the larger societies formed by aggregation. Though, as we are shown by partially-civilized kingdoms existing in Africa, and by