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Sociology and Modern Social Problems

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Title: Sociology and Modern Social Problems

Author: Charles A. Ellwood


        
Release date: September 1, 2004 [eBook #6568]
                Most recently updated: December 29, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOCIOLOGY AND MODERN SOCIAL PROBLEMS ***




Produced by Julie Barkley, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.





SOCIOLOGY AND MODERN SOCIAL PROBLEMS

BY

CHARLES A. ELLWOOD, PH. D.

Professor of Sociology, University of Missouri






PREFACE

This book is intended as an elementary text in sociology as applied to
modern social problems, for use in institutions where but a short time
can be given to the subject, in courses in sociology where it is desired
to combine it with a study of current social problems on the one hand,
and to correlate it with a course in economics on the other. The book is
also especially suited for use in University Extension Courses and in
Teachers' Reading Circles.

This book aims to teach the simpler principles of sociology concretely
and inductively. In Chapters I to VIII the elementary principles of
sociology are stated and illustrated, chiefly through the study of the
origin, development, structure, and functions of the family considered
as a typical human institution; while in Chapters IX to XV certain
special problems are considered in the light of these general
principles.

Inasmuch as the book aims to illustrate the working of certain factors
in social organization and evolution by the study of concrete problems,
interpretation has been emphasized rather than the social facts
themselves. However, the book is not intended to be a contribution to
sociological theory, and no attempt is made to give a systematic
presentation of theory. Rather, the student's attention is called to
certain obvious and elementary forces in the social life, and he is left
to work out his own system of social theory.

To guide the student in further reading, a brief list of select
references in English has been appended to each chapter. Methodological
discussions and much statistical and historical material have been
omitted in order to make the text as simple as possible. These can be
found in the references, or the teacher can supply them at his
discretion.

The many authorities to whom I am indebted for both facts and
interpretations of facts cannot be mentioned individually, except that I
wish to express my special indebtedness to my former teachers, Professor
Willcox of Cornell and Professors Small and Henderson of the University
of Chicago, to whom I am under obligation either directly or indirectly
for much of the substance of this book. The list of references will also
indicate in the main the sources of whatever is not my own.

CHARLES A. ELLWOOD.

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI.






CONTENTS

CHAPTER I: THE STUDY OF SOCIETY

CHAPTER II: THE BEARING OF THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION UPON SOCIAL PROBLEMS

CHAPTER III: THE FUNCTION OF THE FAMILY IN SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

CHAPTER IV: THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

CHAPTER V: THE FORMS OF THE FAMILY

CHAPTER VI: THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE FAMILY

CHAPTER VII: THE PROBLEM OF THE MODERN FAMILY

CHAPTER VIII: THE GROWTH OF POPULATION

CHAPTER IX: THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM

CHAPTER X: THE NEGRO PROBLEM

CHAPTER XI: THE PROBLEM OF THE CITY

CHAPTER XII: POVERTY AND PAUPERISM

CHAPTER XIII: CRIME

CHAPTER XIV: SOCIALISM IN THE LIGHT OF SOCIOLOGY

CHAPTER XV: EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS

INDEX






SOCIOLOGY AND MODERN SOCIAL PROBLEMS



CHAPTER I


THE STUDY OF SOCIETY

What is Society?--Perhaps the great question which sociology seeks to
answer is this question which we have put at the beginning. Just as
biology seeks to answer the question "What is life?"; zoölogy, "What is
an animal?"; botany, "What is a plant?"; so sociology seeks to answer
the question "What is society?" or perhaps better, "What is
association?" Just as biology, zoölogy, and botany cannot answer their
questions until those sciences have reached their full and complete
development, so also sociology cannot answer the question "What is
society?" until it reaches its final development. Nevertheless, some
conception or definition of society is necessary for the beginner, for
in the scientific discussion of social problems we must know first of
all what we are talking about. We must understand in a general way what
society is, what sociology is, what the relations are between sociology
and other sciences, before we can study the social problems of to-day
from a sociological point of view.

The word "society" is used scientifically to designate the reciprocal
relations between individuals. More exactly, and using the term in a
concrete sense, a society is any group of individuals who have more or
less conscious relations to each other. We say conscious relations
because it is not necessary that these relations be specialized into
industrial, political, or ecclesiastical relations. Society is
constituted by the mental interaction of individuals and exists wherever
two or three individuals have reciprocal conscious relations to each
other. Dependence upon a common economic environment, or the mere
contiguity in space is not sufficient to constitute a society. It is the
interdependence in function on the mental side, the contact and
overlapping of our inner selves, which makes possible that form of
collective life which we call society. Plants and lowly types of
organisms do not constitute true societies, unless it can be shown that
they have some degree of mentality. On the other hand, there is no
reason for withholding the term "society" from many animal groups. These
animal societies, however, are very different in many respects from
human society, and are of interest to us only as certain of their forms
throw light upon human society.

We may dismiss with a word certain faulty conceptions of society. In
some of the older sociological writings the word society is often used
as nearly synonymous with the word nation. Now, a nation is a body of
people politically organized into an independent government, and it is
manifest that it is only one of many forms of human society. Another
conception of society, which some have advocated, is that it is
synonymous with the cultural group. That is, a society is any group of
people that have a common civilization, or that are bearers of a certain
type of culture. In this case Christendom, for example, would constitute
a single society. Cultural groups no doubt are, again, one of the forms
of human society, but only one among many. Both the cultural group and
the nation are very imposing forms of society and hence have attracted
the attention of social thinkers very often in the past to the neglect
of the more humble forms. But it is evident that all forms of
association are of equal interest to the sociologist, though, of course,
this is not saying that all forms are of equal practical importance.

Any form of association, or social group, which may be studied, if
studied from the point of view of origin and development, whether it be
a family, a neighborhood group, a city, a state, a trade union, or a
party, will serve to reveal many of the problems of sociology. The
natural or genetic social groups, however, such as the family, the
community, and the nation, serve best to exhibit sociological problems.
In this text we shall make particular use of the family, as the simplest
and, in many ways, the most typical of all the forms of human
association, to illustrate concretely the laws and principles of social
development. Through the study of the simple and primary forms of
association the problems of sociology can be much better attacked than
through the study of society at large, or association in general.

From what has been said it may be inferred that _society_ as a
scientific term means scarcely more than the abstract term
_association_, and this is correct. Association, indeed, may be
regarded as the more scientific term of the two; at any rate it
indicates more exactly what the sociologist deals with. A word may be
said also as to the meaning of the word _social_. The sense in
which this word will generally be used in this text is that of a
collective adjective, referring to all that pertains to or relates to
society in any way. The word social, then, is much broader than the
words industrial, political, moral, religious, and embraces them all;
that is, social phenomena are all phenomena which involve the
interaction of two or more individuals. The word social, then, includes
the economic, political, moral, religious, etc., and must not be thought
of as something set in opposition to, for instance, the industrial or
the political.

Society and its Products.--Beneath all the forms and processes of human
society lies the fact of association itself. Industry, government, and
civilization itself must be regarded as expressions of collective human
life rather than _vice versa_. Industry, for example, is one side
or aspect of man's social life, and must not be mistaken for society
itself. Industry, government, religion, education, art, and the like,
are all products of the social life of man. Among these coördinate
expressions of collective human life, industry, being concerned with the
satisfying of the material needs of men, is perhaps fundamental to the
rest. But this must not lead to the mistaken view that the social life
of man can be interpreted completely through his industrial life; for,
as has just been said, beneath industry and all other aspects of man's
collective life lies the biological and psychological fact of
association. This is equivalent to saying that industry itself must be
interpreted in terms of the biology and psychology of human association.
In other words, industrial problems, political problems, educational
problems, and the like must be viewed from the collective or social
standpoint rather than simply as detached problems by themselves. We
must understand the biological and psychological aspects of man's social
life before we can understand its special phases.

The Origin of Society.--From the definition of society that we have
given it is evident that society is something which springs from the
very processes of life itself. It is not something which has been
invented or planned by individuals. Life, in its higher forms at least,
could not exist without association. From the very beginning the
association of the sexes has been necessary for reproduction and for the
care and rearing of offspring, and it has been not less necessary for
the procuring of an adequate food supply and for protection against
enemies. From the association necessary for reproduction has sprung
family life and all the altruistic institutions of human society, while
from the association for providing food supply have sprung society's
industrial institutions. Neither society nor industry, therefore, has
had a premeditated, reflective origin, but both have sprung up
spontaneously from the needs of life and both have developed down to the
present time at least with but little premeditated guidance. It is
necessary that the student should understand at the outset that social
organization is not a fabrication of the human intellect to any great
degree, and the old idea that individuals who existed independently of
society came together and deliberately planned a certain type of social
organization is utterly without scientific validity. The individual and
society are correlatives. We have no knowledge of individuals apart from
society or society apart from individuals. What we do know is that human
life everywhere is a collective or associated life, the individual being
on the one hand largely an expression of the social life surrounding him
and on the other hand society being largely an expression of individual
character. The reasons for these assertions will appear later as we
develop our subject.

What is Sociology?--The science which deals with human association, its
origin, development, forms, and functions, is sociology. Briefly,
sociology is a science which deals with society as a whole and not with
its separate aspects or phases. It attempts to formulate the laws or
principles which govern social organization and social evolution. This
means that the main problems of sociology are those of the organization
of society on the one hand and the evolution of society on the other.
These words, _organization_ and _evolution_, however, are used
in a broader sense in sociology than they are generally used. By
organization we mean any relation of the parts of society to each other.
By evolution we mean, not necessarily change for the better, but orderly
change of any sort. Sociology is, therefore, a science which deals with
the laws or principles of social organization and of social change. Put
in more exact terms this makes sociology, as we said at the beginning,
the science of the origin, development, structure, and function of the
forms of association. We may pass over very rapidly certain faulty
conceptions of sociology. The first of these is that it is the study of
social evils and their remedies. This conception is faulty because it
makes sociology deal primarily with the abnormal rather than the normal
conditions in society, and secondly, it is to be criticized because it
makes sociology synonymous with scientific philanthropy. It is rather
the science of philanthropy, which is an applied science resting upon
sociology, that studies social evils and their remedies. This is not
saying, of course, that sociology does not consider social evils, but
that it considers them as incidents in the normal processes of social
evolution rather than as its special matter. A second conception of
sociology which is to be dismissed as inadequate is the conception that
it is the science of social phenomena. This conception is not incorrect,
but is somewhat vague, as there are manifestly other sciences of social
phenomena, such as economics and political science. Such a conception of
sociology would make it include everything in human society. A third
faulty conception is that it is the science of human institutions. This
is faulty because it again is too narrow. An institution is a
_sanctioned_ form of human association, while sociology deals with
the ephemeral and unsanctioned forms, such as we see in the phenomena of
mobs, crazes, fads, fashions, and crimes, as well as with the sanctioned
forms. A fourth conception which might be criticized is that sociology
is the science of social organization. This makes sociology deal with
the laws or principles of the relations of individuals to one another,
and of institutions to one another. It is to be criticized as faulty
because it fails to emphasize the evolution of those relations. All
science is now evolutionary in spirit and in method and believes that
things cannot be understood except as they are understood in their
genesis and development. It would, therefore, perhaps be more correct to
define sociology as the science of the evolution of human interrelations
than to define it simply as the science of social organization.

The Problems of Sociology.--The problems of sociology fall into two
great classes; first, problems of the organization of society, and
second, problems of the evolution of society. The problems of the
organization of society are problems of the relations of individuals to
one another and to institutions. Such problems are, for example, the
influence of various elements in the physical environment upon the
social organization; or, again, the influence of various elements in
human nature upon the social order. These problems are, then, problems
of society in a hypothetically stationary condition or at rest. For this
reason Comte, the founder of modern sociology, called the division of
sociology which deals with such problems _Social Statics_. But the
problems which are of most interest and importance in sociology are
those of social evolution. Under this head we have the problem of the
origin of society in general and also of various forms of association.
More important still are the problems of social progress and social
retrogression; that is, the causes of the advancement of society to
higher and more complex types of social organization and the causes of
social decline. The former problem, social progress, is in a peculiar
sense the central problem of sociology. The effort of theoretical
sociology is to develop a scientific theory of social progress. The
study of social evolution, then, that is, social changes of all sorts,
as we have emphasized above, is the vital part of sociology; and it is
manifest that only a general science of society like sociology is
competent to deal with such a problem. Inasmuch as the problems of
social evolution are problems of change, development, or movement in
society, Comte proposed that this division of sociology be called
_Social Dynamics_.

The Relations of Sociology to Other Sciences. [Footnote: For a fuller
discussion of the relations of sociology to other sciences and to
philosophy see my article on "Sociology: Its Problems and Its Relations"
in the _American Journal of Sociology_ for November, 1907.]--(A)
_Relations to Biology and Psychology._ In attempting to give a
scientific view of social organization and social evolution, sociology
has to depend upon the other natural sciences, particularly upon biology
and psychology. It is manifest that sociology must depend upon biology,
since biology is the general science of life, and human society is but
part of the world of life in general. It is manifest also that sociology
must depend upon psychology to explain the interactions between
individuals because these interactions are for the most part
interactions between their minds. Thus on the one hand all social
phenomena are vital phenomena and on the other hand nearly all social
phenomena are mental phenomena. Every social problem has, in other
words, its psychological and its biological sides, and sociology is
distinguished from biology and psychology only as a matter of
convenience. The scientific division of labor necessitates that certain
scientific workers concern themselves with certain problems. Now, the
problems with which the biologist and the psychologist deal are not the
problems of the organization and evolution of society. Hence, while the
sociologist borrows his principles of interpretation from biology and
psychology, he has his own distinctive problems, and it is this fact
which makes sociology a distinct science.

Sociology is not so easily distinguished from the special social
sciences like politics, economics, and others, as it is from the other
general sciences. These sciences occupy the same field as sociology,
that is, they have to do with social phenomena. But in general, as has
already been pointed out, they are concerned chiefly with certain very
special aspects or phases of the social life and not with its most
general problems. If sociology, then, is dependent upon the other
general sciences, particularly upon biology and psychology, it is
obvious that its relation to the special sciences is the reverse,
namely, these sciences are dependent upon sociology. This is only saying
practically the same thing as was said above when we pointed out that
industry, government, and religion are but expressions of human social
life. In other words, sociology deals with the more general biological
and psychological aspects of human association, while the special
sciences of economics, politics, and the like, generally deal with
certain products or highly specialized phases of society.

(B) _Relations to History._ [Footnote: For a discussion of the
practical relations between the teaching of history and of sociology,
see my paper on "How History can be taught from a Sociological Point of
View," in Education for January, 1910.] A word may be said about the
relation of sociology to another science which also deals with human
society in a general way, and that is history. History is a concrete,
descriptive science of society which attempts to construct a picture of
the social past. Sociology, however, is an abstract, theoretical science
of society concerned with the laws and principles which govern social
organization and social change. In a sense, sociology is narrower than
history inasmuch as it is an abstract science, and in another sense it
is wider than history because it concerns itself not only with the
social past but also with the social present. The facts of contemporary
social life are indeed even more important to the sociologist than the
facts of history, although it is impossible to construct a theory of
social evolution without taking into full account all the facts
available in human history, and in this sense history becomes one of the
very important methods of sociology. Upon its evolutionary or dynamic
side sociology may be considered a sort of philosophy of history; at
least it attempts to give a scientific theory which will explain the
social changes which history describes concretely.

(C) Relations to Economics. Economics is that special social science
which deals with the wealth-getting and wealth-using activities of man.
In other words, it is concerned with the commercial and industrial
activities of man. As has already been implied, economics must be
considered one of the most important of the special social sciences, if
not the most important. Yet it is evident that the wealth-getting and
wealth-using activities of man are strictly an outgrowth of his social
life, and that economics as a science of human industry must rest upon
sociology. Sometimes in the past the mistake has been made of supposing
that economics dealt with the most fundamental social phenomena, and
even at times economists have spoken of their science as alone
sufficient to explain all social phenomena. It cannot be admitted,
however, that we can explain social organization in general or social
progress in terms of economic development. A theory of progress, for
example, in which the sole causes of human progress were found in
economic conditions would neglect political, religious, educational, and
many other conditions. Only a very one-sided theory of society can be
built upon such a basis. Economics should keep to its own sphere of
explaining the commercial and industrial activities of man and not
attempt to become a general science dealing with social evolution. This
is now recognized by practically all economists of standing, and the
only question which remains is whether economics is independent of
sociology or whether it rests upon sociology.

The view which has been presented thus far and which will be adhered to
is that economics should rest upon sociology. That economics does rest
upon sociology is shown by many considerations. The chief problem of
theoretical economics is the problem of economic value. But economic
value is but one sort of value which is recognized in society, moral and
aesthetic values being other examples of the valuing process, and all
values must express the collective judgment of some human group or
other. The problem of economic value, in other words, reduces itself to
a problem in social psychology, and when this is said it is equivalent
to making economics dependent upon sociology, for social psychology is
simply the psychological aspect of sociology. Again, industrial
organization and industrial evolution are but parts or phases of social
evolution in general, and it is safe to say that industry, both in its
organization and evolution, cannot be understood apart from the general
conditions, psychological and biological, which surround society. Again,
many non-economic forces continually obtrude themselves upon the student
of industrial conditions, such as custom, invention, imitation,
standards, ideals, and the like. These are general social forces which
play throughout all phases of human social life and so show the
dependence of industry upon society in general, and, therefore, of
economics upon sociology. Much more might be said in the way of
concretely illustrating these statements, but the purpose of this text
precludes anything but the briefest and most elementary statement of
these theoretical facts.

(D) _Relations to Politics._ We have already said that the state is
one of the chief forms of human association. The science which treats of
the state or of government is known as political science or politics. It
is one of the oldest of the social sciences, having been more or less
systematized by Aristotle. The problems of politics are those of the
origin, nature, function, and development of government. It is manifest
that politics, both on its practical and theoretical sides, has many
close relations to sociology. While the state or nation must not be
confused with society in general, yet because the state is the most
imposing, if not the most important, form of human association, the
relations of politics and sociology must be very intimate. On the one
hand, political scientists can scarcely understand the origin, nature,
and proper functions of government without understanding more or less
about the social life generally; and, on the other hand, the sociologist
finds that one of the most important facts of human society is that of
social control, or of authority. While political science deals only with
the organized authority manifested in the state, which we call
government, yet inasmuch as this is the most important form of social
control, and inasmuch as political organization is one of the chief
manifestations of social organization, the sociologist can scarcely deal
adequately with the great problems of social organization and evolution
without constant reference to political science.

An important branch of political science is jurisprudence, or the
science of law. This, again, is closely related with sociology, on both
its theoretical and practical sides. Law is, perhaps, the most important
means of social control made use of by society, and the sociologist
needs to understand something of the principles of law in order to
understand the nature of the existing social order. On the other hand,
the jurist needs to know the principles of social organization and
evolution in general before he can understand the nature and purpose of
law.

(E) _Relations to Ethics._ [Footnote: For a full statement of my
views regarding the relations of sociology and ethics, see my article on
"The Sociological Basis of Ethics," in the _International Journal of
Ethics_ for April, 1910.] Ethics is the science which deals with the
right or wrong of human conduct. Its problems are the nature of morality
and of moral obligation, the validity of moral ideals, the norms by
which conduct is to be judged, and the like. While ethics was once
considered to be a science of individual conduct it is now generally
conceived as being essentially a social science. The moral and the
social are indeed not clearly separable, but we may consider the moral
to be the ideal aspect of the social.

This view of morality, which, for the most part, is indorsed by modern
thought, makes ethics dependent upon sociology for its criteria of
rightness or wrongness. Indeed, we cannot argue any moral question
nowadays unless we argue it in social terms. If we discuss the rightness
or wrongness of the drink habit we try to show its social consequences.
So, too, if we discuss the rightness or wrongness of such an institution
as polygamy we find ourselves forced to do so mainly in social terms.
This is not denying, of course, that there are religious and
metaphysical aspects to morality,--these are not necessarily in conflict
with the social aspects,--but it is saying that modern ethical theory is
coming more and more to base itself upon the study of the remote social
consequences of conduct, and that we cannot judge what is right or wrong
in our complex society unless we know something of the social
consequences.

Ethics must be regarded, therefore, as a normative science to which
sociology and the other social sciences lead up. It is, indeed, very
difficult to separate ethics from sociology. It is the business of
sociology to furnish norms and standards to ethics, and it is the
business of ethics as a science to take the norms and standards
furnished by the social sciences, to develop them, and to criticize
them. This text therefore, will not attempt to exclude ethical
implications and judgments from sociological discussions, because that
would be futile and childish.

(F) _Relations to Education._ Among the applied sciences, sociology
is especially closely related to education, for education is not simply
the art of developing the powers and capacities of the individual; it is
rather the fitting of individuals for efficient membership, for proper
functioning, in social life. On its individual side, education should
initiate the individual into the social life and fit him for social
service. It should create the good citizen. On the social or public
side, education should be the chief means of social progress. It should
regenerate society, by fitting the individual for a higher type of
social life than at present achieved. We must have a socialized
education if our present complex civilization is to endure. Social
problems touch education on every side, and, on the other hand,
education must bear upon every social problem. It is evident, therefore,
that sociology has a very great bearing upon the problems of education;
and the teacher who comes to his task equipped with a knowledge of
social conditions and of the laws and principles of social organization
and evolution will find a significance and meaning in his work which he
could hardly otherwise find.

(G) _Relations to Philanthropy._[Footnote: This topic is more fully
discussed in my article on "Philanthropy and Sociology" in The Survey
for June 4, 1910.] The great science which deals directly with the
depressed classes in society and with their uplift may be called the
science of philanthropy. It may be regarded as an applied department of
sociology. The science of philanthropy is especially concerned with the
prevention, as well as with the curative treatment, of dependency,
defectiveness, and delinquency. That part which deals with the social
treatment of the criminal class is generally called penology, while the
subdivision which treats of dependents and defectives is generally known
as "charities" or "charitology."

It is evident that there are very close relations between the science of
philanthropy and sociology. The elimination of hereditary defects, the
overcoming of the social maladjustment of individuals, and the
correction of defective social conditions, the three great tasks of
scientific philanthropy, all require great knowledge of human society.
The social or philanthropic worker, therefore, requires thorough
equipment in sociology that he may approach his tasks aright.

The Relation of Sociology to Socialism.--Curiously enough sociology is
often confused with socialism by those who pay but little attention to
scientific matters. This comes from the fact that some of the adherents
of socialism claim that socialism is a science. As a matter of fact,
socialism is primarily a party program. It is the platform of a social
and political party that has as the main tenet of its creed the
abolition of private property in the means of production. Socialism, in
other words, is a scheme to revolutionize the present order of society.
It cannot claim to be a science in any sense, though it may rest upon
theories which its adherents believe to be scientific. Sociology, on the
other hand, is a science, and is concerned not with revolutionizing the
social order, but with studying and understanding social conditions,
especially the more fundamental conditions upon which social
organization and social changes depend. As a science it aims simply at
understanding society, at getting at the truth. It is no more related
logically to socialism than to the platform of the Republican or the
Democratic party.

The theories upon which revolutionary socialism rest may be proved or
disproved by scientific sociology. It is perhaps too early to say
finally whether sociology will pronounce the theoretical assumptions of
socialism correct or incorrect; but so far as we can see it seems
probable that the theories of social evolution advocated by the Marxian
socialists at least will be pronounced erroneous. In any case, there is
no logical connection between sociology as a science and socialism as a
program for social reconstruction.

Nevertheless, there has been a close connection between sociology and
socialism historically. It has been largely the agitations of the
socialists and other radical social reformers which have called
attention to the need of a scientific understanding of human society.
The socialists and other radical reformers, in other words, have very
largely set the problem which sociology attempts to solve. Practically,
moreover, the indictments and charges of the socialists and anarchists
against the present social order have made necessary some study of that
order to see whether these charges were well founded or not. In this
sense sociology may be said to be a scientific answer to socialism, not
in the sense that sociology is devoted to refuting socialism, but in the
sense that sociology has been devoted very largely to inquiring into
many of the theoretical assumptions which revolutionary socialism makes.

The further relations of sociology to socialism will be taken up later.
Here we are only concerned to have the reader see that there is a sharp
distinction between the sociological movement on the one hand, that is,
the movement to obtain fuller and more accurate knowledge concerning
human social life, and the socialist movement, the movement to
revolutionize the present social and economic order. Moreover, it may be
remarked that while socialism seems to be mainly an economic program, it
involves such total and radical reconstruction of social organization
that in the long run the claims of socialism to a scientific validity
must be passed upon by sociology rather than by economics.

The Relation of Sociology to Social Reform.--From what has been said it
is also evident that sociology must not be confused with any particular
social reform movement or with the movement for social reform in
general. Sociology, as a science, cannot afford to be developed in the
interest of any social reform. Certain social reforms, sociology may
give its approval to; others it may designate as unwise; but this
approval or disapproval will be simply incidental to its discovery of
the full truth about human social relations. This is not saying, of
course, that social theory should be divorced from social practice, or
that the knowledge which sociology and the other social sciences offer
concerning human society has no practical bearing upon present social
conditions. On the contrary, while all science aims abstractly at the
truth, all science is practical also in a deeper sense. No science would
ever have been developed if it were not conceived that the knowledge
which it discovers will ultimately be of benefit to man. All science
exists, therefore, to benefit man, to enable him to master his
environment, and the social sciences not less than the other sciences.
The physical sciences have already enabled man to attain to a
considerable mastery over his physical environment. When the social
sciences have been developed it is safe to say that they will enable man
not less to master his social environment. Therefore, while sociology
and the special social sciences present as yet no program for action,
aiming simply at the discovery of the abstract truth, they will
undoubtedly in time bring about vast changes for the betterment of
social conditions.


SELECT REFERENCES


_For Brief Reading:_

WARD, _Outlines of Sociology,_ Chaps. I-VIII.
ROSS, _The foundations of Sociology,_ Chaps. I and II.
DEALEY, _Sociology, Its simpler Teachings and Applications,_ Chap. I.


_For More Extended Reading:_

GIDDINGS, _The Principles of Sociology,_ 3d edition.
SMALL, _General Sociology._
SPENCER, _The Study of Sociology._
STUCKENBERG, _Sociology: The Science of Human Society._
WARD, _Pure Sociology._
_American Journal of Sociology_, many articles.
For a fairly extensive bibliography on sociology, consult Howard's
     General Sociology: An Analytical Reference Syllabus.






CHAPTER II


THE BEARING OF THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION UPON SOCIAL PROBLEMS

Since Darwin wrote his _Origin of Species_ all the sciences in any
way connected with biology have been profoundly influenced by his theory
of evolution. It is important that the student of sociology, therefore,
should understand at the outset something of the bearing of Darwin's
theory upon social problems.

We may note at the beginning, however, that the word _evolution_
has two distinct, though related, meanings. First, it usually means
Darwin's doctrine of descent; secondly, it is used to designate
Spencer's theory of universal evolution. Let us note somewhat in detail
what evolution means in the first of these senses.

The Darwinian Theory of Descent.--Darwin's theory of descent is the
doctrine that all forms of life now existing or that have existed upon
the earth have sprung from a few simple primitive types. According to
this theory all forms of animals and plants have sprung from a few
primitive stocks, though not necessarily one, because even in the
beginning there may have existed a distinction at least between the
plant and the animal types. So far as the animal world is concerned,
then, this theory amounts to the assertion of the kinship of all life.
From one or more simple primitive unicellular forms have arisen the
great multitude of multicellular forms that now exist. Popularly,
Darwin's theory is supposed to be that man sprang from the apes, but
this, strictly speaking, is a misconception. Darwin's theory
necessitates the belief, not that man sprang from any existing species
of ape, but rather that the apes and man have sprung from some common
stock. It is equally true, however, that man and many other of the lower
animals, according to this theory, have come from a common stock. As was
said above, the theory is not a theory of the descent of man from any
particular animal type, but rather the theory of the kinship, the
genetic relationship, of all animal species.

It is evident that if we assume Darwin's theory of descent in sociology
we must look for the beginnings of many peculiarly human things in the
animal world below man. Human institutions, according to this theory,
could not be supposed to have an independent origin, or human society in
any of its forms to be a fact by itself, but rather all human things are
connected with the whole world of animal life below man. Thus if we are,
according to this theory, to look for the origin of the family, we
should have to turn first of all to the habits of animals nearest man.
This is only one of the many bearings which Darwin's theory has upon the
study of social problems; but it is evident even from this that it
revolutionizes sociology. So long as it was possible to look upon human
society as a distinct creation, as something isolated, by itself in
nature, it was possible to hold to intellectualistic views of the origin
of human institutions.

But some one may ask: Why should the sociologist accept Darwin's theory?
What proofs does it rest upon? What warrant has a student of sociology
for accepting a doctrine of such far-reaching consequences? The reply
is, that biologists, generally, during the last fifty years, after a
careful study of Darwin's arguments and after a careful examination of
all other evidence, have come substantially to agree with him. There is
no great biologist now living who does not accept the essentials of the
doctrine of descent. Five lines of proof may be offered in support of
Darwin's theories, and it may be well for us, as students of sociology,
briefly to review these.

(1) The homologies or similarities of structure of different animals.
There are very striking similarities of structure between all the higher
animals. Between the ape and man, for example, there are over one
hundred and fifty such anatomical homologies; that is, in the ape we
find bone for bone, and muscle for muscle, corresponding to the
structure of the human body. Even an animal so remotely related to man
as the cat has many more resemblances to man in anatomical structure
than dissimilarities. Now, the meaning of these anatomical homologies,
biologists say, is that these animals are genetically related, that is,
they had a common ancestry at some remote period in the past.

(2) The presence of vestigial organs in the higher animals supplies
another argument for the belief in common descent. In man, for example,
there exist over one hundred of these vestigial or rudimentary organs,
as the vermiform appendix, the pineal gland, and the like. Many of these
vestigal organs, which are now functionless in man, perform functions in
lower animals, and this is held to show that at some remote period in
the past they also functioned in man's ancestors.

(3) The facts of embryology seem to point to the descent of the higher
types of animals from the lower types. The embryo or fetus in its
development seems to recapitulate the various stages through which the
species has passed. Thus the human embryo at one stage of its
development resembles the fish; at another stage, the embryo of a dog;
and for a long time it is impossible to distinguish between the human
embryo and that of one of the larger apes. These embryological facts,
biologists say, indicate genetic relation between the various animal
forms which the embryo in its different stages simulates.

(4) The fossil remains of extinct species of animals are found in the
earth's crust which are evidently ancestors of existing species. Until
the doctrine of descent was accepted there was no way of explaining the
presence of these fossil remains of extinct animals in the earth's
crust. It was supposed by some that the earth had passed through a
series of cataclysms in which all forms of life upon the earth had been
many times destroyed and many times re-created. It is now demonstrated,
however, that these fossils are related to existing species, and
sometimes it is possible to trace back the evolution of existing forms
to very primitive forms in this way. For example, it is possible to
trace the horse, which is now an animal with a single hoof, walking on a
single toe, back to an animal that walked upon four toes and had four
hoofs and was not much larger than a fox. It is not so generally known
that it is also possible to trace man back through fossil human remains
that have been discovered in the earth's crust to the time when he is
apparently just emerging from some apelike form. The latest discovery of
the fossil remains of man made by Dr. Dubois in Java in 1894 shows a
creature with about half the brain capacity of the existing civilized
man and with many apelike characteristics. Thus we cannot except even
man from the theory of evolution and suppose that he was especially
created, as Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin's contemporary and colaborer,
and others, have supposed.

(5) The last line of argument in favor of the belief that all existing
species have descended from a few simple primitive forms is found in the
fact of the variation of animals through artificial selection under
domestication. For generations breeders have known that by carefully
selecting the type of animal or plant which they have desired, it is
possible to produce approximately that type. Thus have originated all
the breeds or varieties of domestic plants and animals. Now, Darwin
conceived that nature also exercises a selection by weeding out those
individuals that are not adapted to their environment. In other words,
nature, though unconscious, selects in a negative way the stronger and
the better adapted. Animals vary in nature as well as under
domestication from causes not yet well understood. The variations that
were favorable to survival, Darwin argued, would secure the survival,
through the passing on of these variations by heredity of the better
adapted types of plants and animals. The natural process of weeding out
the inferior or least adapted through early death, or through failure to
reproduce, Darwin called "natural selection", and likened it in its
effect upon organisms to the artificial selection which breeders
consciously use to secure types of plants or animals that they desire.
The only great addition to Darwin's theories which has been made since
he wrote is that of the Dutch botanist, Hugo de Vries, who has shown
that the variations which are fruitful for the production of new species
are probably great or discontinuous variations, which he terms
"mutations," instead of the small fluctuating variations which Darwin
thought were probably most important in the production of new species.
De Vries' theory in no way affects the doctrine of descent, nor does it
take away from the importance of natural selection in fixing the
variations. Darwin's theory, therefore, stands in all of its essentials
to-day unquestioned by men of science, and it must be assumed by the
student of sociology in any attempt to explain social evolution.

Spencer's Theory of Universal Evolution.--A second meaning given to the
word _evolution_ is that which Spencer popularized in his _First
Principles_. This is a philosophical theory of the universe which
asserts that not only have species of animals come to be what they are
through a process of development, but everything whatsoever that exists,
from molecules of matter to stars and planets. It is the view that the
universe is in a process of development. Evolution in this wider sense
includes all existing things whatsoever, while evolution in the sense of
Darwin's theory is confined to the organic world. While the theory that
all things existing have through a process of orderly change come to be
what they are, is a very old one, yet it was undoubtedly Spencer's
writings which popularized the theory, and to Spencer we also owe the
attempt in his Synthetic Philosophy to trace the working of evolution in
all the different realms of phenomena. The belief in universal evolution
which Spencer popularized has also come to be generally accepted by
scientific and philosophical thinkers. While Spencer's particular
theories of evolution may not be accepted, some form of universal
evolution is very generally believed in. The thought of evolution now
dominates all the sciences,--physical, biological, psychological, and
sociological. It is evident that the student of society, if he accepts
fully the modern scientific spirit, must also assume evolution in this
second or universal sense.

The Different Phases of Universal Evolution.--It may be well, in order
to correlate our knowledge of social evolution with knowledge in
general, to note the different well-marked phases of universal
evolution.

(1) _Cosmic Evolution._ This is the phase the astronomer and the
geologist are particularly interested in. It deals with the evolution of
worlds. In this phase we are dealing merely with physical matter, and it
is supposed that the active principle which works in this phase of
evolution is the attraction of particles of matter for one another. This
leads to the condensation of matter into suns and their planets, and the
geological evolution of the earth, for example. Laplace's nebular
hypothesis is an attempt to give an adequate statement of the cosmic
phase of evolution. While this hypothesis has been much criticized of
late, in its essentials it seems to stand. We are not, however, as
students of society, concerned with this phase of evolution.

(2) _Organic Evolution._ This is the phase of evolution with which
Darwin dealt and which biology, as a science of evolution of living
forms, deals with. The great merit of Darwin's work was that he showed
that the active principle in this phase of evolution is natural
selection; that is, the extermination of the unadapted through death or
through failure to reproduce. Types unsuited to their environment thus
die before reproduction. The stronger and better fitted survive, and
thus the type is raised. Natural selection may be regarded, then, as
essentially the creative force in this phase of evolution.

(3) _The Evolution of Mind._ This might be included in organic
evolution, but all organisms do not apparently have minds. It is evident
that among animals those that would stand the best chance of surviving
would not be simply those that have the strongest brute strength, but
rather those that have the keenest intelligence and that could adapt
themselves quickly to their environment, that could see approaching
danger and escape it. Natural selection has, therefore, favored in the
animal world the survival of those animals with the highest type of
intelligence. It cannot be said, however, that natural selection is the
only force which has created the mind in all its various expressions.

(4) _Social Evolution._ By social evolution we mean the evolution
of groups, or, in strict accordance with our definition of society,
groups of psychically interconnected individuals. Groups are to be found
throughout the animal world, and it is in the human species, as we have
already seen, that the highest types of association are found. This is
not an accident. Association, or living together in groups, has been one
of the devices by which animal species have been enabled to survive. It
is evident that not only would intelligence help an animal to survive
more than brute strength, but that ability to cooperate with one's
fellows would also help in the same way. Consequently we find a degree
of combination or coöperation almost at the very beginning of life, and
it is without doubt through coöperation that man has become the dominant
and supreme species upon the planet. Man's social instincts, in other
words, have been perhaps even more important for his survival than his
intelligence. The man who lies, cheats, and steals, or who indulges in
other unsocial conduct sets himself against his group and places his
group at a disadvantage as compared with other groups. Now, natural
selection is continually operating upon groups as well as upon
individuals, and the group which can command the most loyal, most
efficient membership, and has the best organization, is, other things
being equal, the group which survives. Natural selection is, then,
active in social evolution as well as in general organic evolution. But
the distinctive principle of social evolution is coöperation. In other
words, it is sympathetic feeling, altruism, which has made the higher
types of social evolution possible.

While the same factors are at work in the higher phases of evolution
which are at work in the lower phases, yet it is evident that the higher
phases have new and distinct factors. Sociology, being especially
concerned with social evolution, has a new and distinct factor at work
which we may call association, coöperation, or combination, and this it
is which gives sociology its distinct place in the list of general
sciences.

Factors In Organic Evolution.--As has already been said, the factors
which are at work in organic evolution generally are also at work in
social evolution. We need, therefore, to note these factors carefully
and to see how they are at work in human society as well as in the
animal world below man. While these factors are not all of the factors
which are at work in social evolution, still they are the primitive
factors, and are, therefore, of fundamental importance. Let us see what
these factors are.

(1) _The Multiplication of Organisms in Some Geometric Ratio through
Reproduction._ It is a law of life that every species must increase
so that the number of offspring exceeds the number of parents if the
species is to survive. If the offspring only equal in number the
parents, some of them will die before maturity is reached or will fail
to reproduce, and so the species will gradually become extinct. Every
species normally increases, therefore, in some geometric ratio. Now,
this tendency to reproduce in some geometric ratio, which characterizes
all living organisms, means that any species, if left to itself, would
soon reach such numbers as to occupy the whole earth. Darwin showed, for
example, that though the elephant is the slowest breeding of all
animals, if every elephant lived its normal length of life (one hundred
years) and to every pair were born six offspring, then, at the end of
seven hundred years there would be nineteen million living elephants
descended from a single pair. This illustration shows the enormous
possibilities of any species reproducing in geometric ratio, as all
species in order to survive must do.

That this tendency to increase in some geometric ratio applies also to
man is evident from all of the facts which we know concerning human
populations. It is not infrequent for a people to double its numbers
every twenty-five years. If this were continued for any length of time,
it is evident that a single nation could soon populate the whole earth.

(2) _Heredity._ Heredity in organic evolution secures a continuity
of the species or racial type. By heredity is meant the resemblance
between parent and offspring. It is the law that like begets like.
Offspring born of a species belong to that species, and usually resemble
their parents more closely even than other members of the species.

It is evident that heredity is at work also in human society as well as
in the animal world. We do not expect that the children born of parents
of one race, for example, will belong to another race. Racial heredity
is one of the most significant facts of human society, and even family
heredity counts in its influence far more than some have supposed.

(3) _Variation._ This factor in organic evolution means that no two
individuals, even though born of the same parents, are exactly like each
other. Neither are they of a type exactly between their two parents, as
theoretically they should be, since inheritance is equal from both
parents. Every new individual born in the organic world, while it
resembles its parents and belongs to its species or race, varies within
certain limits. This variation so runs through organic nature that we
are told that there are no two leaves on a single tree exactly alike.
The result of this variation, the causes of which are not yet well
understood, is that some individuals vary in favorable directions,
others in unfavorable directions. Some are born strong, some weak; some
inferior, some superior.

It is evident that variation characterizes the human species quite as
much as other species, and indeed the limits of variation are wider,
probably, in the human species than in any other species. Man is the
most variable of all animals, and human individuality and personality
owe not a little of their distinctiveness to this fact.

(4) _The Struggle for Existence._ Individuals in all species, as we
have seen, are born in larger numbers than is necessary. The result is
that a competition is entered into between species and individuals
within the species for place and for existence. This competition or
struggle results in the dying out of the inferior, that is, of those who
are not adapted to their environment. The gradual dying out of the
inferior or unadapted through competition results in the survival of the
superior or better adapted, and ultimately in the survival of the
fittest or those most adapted. Thus the type is raised, and we have
evolution through natural selection, that is, through the elimination of
the unfit.

Some have thought that this struggle for existence which is so evident
in the animal world does not take place in human society. This, however,
is a mistake. The struggle for existence in human society is not an
unmitigated one, as it seems to be very often in the animal world, but
it is nevertheless a struggle which has the same consequences. In the
human world the competition, except in the lower classes, is not so much
for food, as it is for position and for supremacy. But this struggle for
place and power results in human society in the weak and inferior going
to the wall, and therefore ultimately in their elimination. In all
essential respects, then, the struggle for existence goes on in human
society as it does in the animal world. This means that in society, as
in the animal world, progress comes primarily through the elimination of
unfit individuals. The unfit in human society, as we shall see, are
especially those who cannot adapt themselves to their social
environment. Progress in society, in a certain sense, waits upon death,
as it does in all the rest of the animal world. Death is the means by
which the stream of life is purged from its inferior and unfit elements.

(5) _Another Factor in Organic Evolution is Coöperation_, or
altruism, as we have already called it. As Henry Drummond has said, this
is the struggle not for one's own life but for the lives of others.
Really, however, it is a device which enables a group of individuals to
struggle more successfully with the adverse factors in their
environment. Something of coöperation,--that is, a group of individuals
carrying on a common life,--is found almost at the beginning of life,
and, as we rise in the scale of animal creation, the amount of
coöperation and of altruistic feelings which accompany it very greatly
increases. Perhaps the chief source of this coöperation is to be found
in the rearing of offspring. The family group, even in the lower
animals, seems to be the chief source of altruism. At any rate,
sympathetic or altruistic instincts grow up in all animals, probably
chiefly through the necessities of reproduction.

It is only in human social life that coöperation, or altruism, attains
its full development. Human society is characterized by the protection
it affords to its weaker members, and in human society the natural
process of eliminating the inferior often seems reversed. As Huxley has
pointed out, human society tries to fit as many as possible to survive,
and we may add, not only to survive, but to live well. Altruism and its
resulting coöperation have come especially to characterize human social
evolution. To some extent this is due, no doubt, to the necessities of
group survival; for only that nation, for example, can survive that can
maintain the most loyal citizenship, the best institutions, and the
largest spirit of self-sacrifice in its members. Human social groups,
therefore, try to fit as many individuals as possible for the most
efficient membership, and this necessitates caring for the temporarily
weak, and also for the permanently incapacitated, in order that the
sentiments of social solidarity may be strengthened to their utmost.

It is evident, then, that all the factors at work in organic evolution
are at work also in social evolution, though in some part modified and
varying in degree. The struggle for existence in human society, for
example, has been greatly modified from the condition in the early
animal world, while coöperation, or altruism, is much more highly
developed. Nevertheless, these factors of organic evolution are at work
in social evolution and must be taken into full account by the student
of social problems. Social evolution rests upon organic evolution.

Some Effects upon Industry.--These factors in organic evolution express
themselves more or less in the industrial phase of human society. Thus,
the first factor, the multiplication of organisms through reproduction
in some geometric ratio, was first studied by Malthus, an economist in
the beginning of the nineteenth century, and exclusively with reference
to its effect upon economic conditions. Malthus perceived the tendency
for human beings to multiply in some geometric ratio where food supply
was sufficiently abundant, and argued from this that if better wages,
and so a larger food supply, were given the lower classes, they would
multiply so much more rapidly that worse poverty would result than
before. There is no doubt that in certain classes of human society there
is a tendency for population to press against food supply, and it is in
these classes that the struggle for existence takes on its most
animal-like forms.

Again, the struggle for existence is continually illustrated in the
world of human industry. Not only do individuals lose place and power
because they are unadapted to their environment, but also economic
groups, such as corporations, show the natural competition or struggle
for existence sometimes in its most intense form. The result in all
cases is the dying out of the least adapted and the survival of the
better adapted. Thus, through competition and the survival of the better
adapted we secure in industry the evolution of higher types of
industrial organization, industrial methods, and the like, just as
higher types are secured in the same way in the animal world. Again, in
economic matters, as in other social affairs, coöperation continually
comes in to modify competition and to lift it to a higher plane. Just as
the higher type of societies has been characterized by higher types of
coöperation, so it is safe to say that the higher types of industry are
characterized by higher types of coöperation. And while, as we shall see
later, coöperation can never displace competition in industry any more
than elsewhere in life, yet increasing coöperation characterizes the
higher types of industry as well as the higher types of society.

A word of caution is perhaps necessary against confusing the economic
struggle as it exists in modern society with the natural struggle under
primitive conditions. It is evident that in present society the economic
struggle has been greatly changed in character from the primitive
struggle, and therefore can no longer have the same results. Laws of
inheritance, of taxation, and many other artificial economic conditions,
have greatly interfered with the natural struggle. The rich and
economically successful are therefore by no means to be confused with
the biologically fit. On the contrary, many of the economically
successful are such simply through artificial advantageous
circumstances, and from the standpoint of biology and sociology they are
often among the less fit, rather than the more fit, elements of society.

A Brief Survey of Social Evolution from the Biological Standpoint.--In
order to sum up and make clear some of the principal applications to
social evolution of the biological principles just stated we shall
endeavor to state in a brief way some of the salient features of social
evolution from the biological standpoint.

From the very beginning there has been no such thing as unmitigated
individual struggle among animals. Nowhere in nature does pure
individualism exist in the sense that the individual animal struggles
alone, except perhaps in a few solitary species which are apparently on
the way to extinction. The assumption of such a primitive individual
struggle has been at the bottom of many erroneous views of human
society. The primary conflict is between species. A secondary conflict,
however, is always found between the members of the same species.
Usually this conflict within the species is a competition between
groups. The human species exactly illustrates these statements.
Primitively its great conflict was with other species of animals. The
supremacy of man over the rest of the animal world was won only after an
age-long conflict between man and his animal rivals. While this conflict
went on there was apparently but little struggle within the species
itself. The lowest groups of which we have knowledge, while continually
struggling against nature, are rarely at war with one another. But after
man had won his supremacy and the population of groups came to increase
so as to encroach seriously upon food supply, and even on territorial
limits of space, then a conflict between human groups, which we call
war, broke out and became almost second nature to man. It needs to be
emphasized, however, that the most primitive groups are not warlike, but
only those that have achieved their supremacy over nature and attained
considerable size. In other words, the struggle between groups which we
call war was occasioned very largely by numbers and food supply. To this
extent at least war primitively arose from economic conditions, and it
is remarkable how economic conditions have been instrumental in bringing
about all the great wars of recorded human history.

The conflict among human groups, which we call war, has had an immense
effect upon human social evolution. Five chief effects must be noted.

(1) Intergroup struggle gave rise to higher forms of social
organization, because only those groups could succeed in competition
with other groups that were well organized, and especially only those
that had competent leadership.

(2) Government, as we understand the word, was very largely an outcome
of the necessities of this intergroup struggle, or war. As we have
already seen, the groups that were best organized, that had the most
competent leadership, would stand the best chance of surviving.
Consequently the war leader or chief soon came, through habit, to be
looked upon as the head of the group in all matters. Moreover, the
exigencies and stresses of war frequently necessitated giving the war
chief supreme authority in times of danger, and from this, without
doubt, arose despotism in all of its forms. The most primitive tribes
are republican or democratic in their form of government, but it has
been found that despotic forms of government rapidly take the place of
the primitive democratic type, where a people are continually at war
with other peoples.

(3) A third result of war in primitive times was the creation of social
classes. After a certain stage was reached groups tried not so much to
exterminate one another as to conquer and absorb one another. This was,
of course, after agriculture had been developed and slave labor had
reached a considerable value. Under such circumstances a conquered group
would be incorporated by the conquerors as a slave or subject class.
Later, this enslaved class may have become partially free as compared
with some more recently subjugated or enslaved classes, and several
classes in this way could emerge in a group through war or conquest.
Moreover, the presence of these alien and subject elements in a group
necessitated a stronger and more centralized government to keep them in
control, and this was again one way in which war favored a development
of despotic governments. Later, of course, economic conditions gave rise
to classes, and to certain struggles between the classes composing a
people.

(4) Not only was social and political organization and the evolution of
classes favored by intergroup struggle, but also the evolution of
morality. The group that could be most efficiently organized would be,
other things being equal, the group which had the most loyal and most
self-sacrificing membership. The group that lacked a group spirit, that
is, strong sentiments of solidarity and harmonious relations between its
members, would be the group that would be apt to lose in conflict with
other groups, and so its type would tend to be eliminated. Consequently
in all human groups we find recognition of certain standards of conduct
which are binding as between members of the same group. For example,
while a savage might incur no odium through killing a member of another
group, he was almost always certain to incur either death or exile
through killing a member of his own group. Hence arose a group code of
ethics founded very largely upon the conceptions of kinship or blood
relationship, which bound all members of a primitive group to one
another.

(5) A final consequence of war among human groups has been the
absorption of weaker groups and the growth of larger and larger
political groups, until in modern times a few great nations dominate the
population of the whole world. That this was not the primitive
condition, we know from human history and from other facts which
indicate the disappearance of a vast number of human groups in the past.
The earth is a burial ground of tribes and natrons as well as of
individuals. In the competition between human groups, only a few that
have had efficient organization and government, loyal membership and
high standards of conduct within the group, have survived. The number of
peoples that have perished in the past is impossible to estimate. But we
can get some inkling of the number by the fact that philologists
estimate that for every living language there are twenty dead languages.
When we remember that a language not infrequently stands for several
groups with related cultures, we can guess the immense number of human
societies that have perished in the past in this intergroup competition.

Even though war passes away entirely, nations can never escape this
competition with one another. While the competition may not be upon the
low and brutal plane of war, it will certainly go on upon the higher
plane of commerce and industry, and will probably be on this higher
plane quite as decisive in the life of peoples in future as war was in
the past.

While the primary struggle within the human species has been in the
historic period between nations and races, this is not saying, of
course, that struggle and competition have not gone on within these
larger groups. On the contrary, as has already been implied, a continual
struggle has gone on between classes, first perhaps of racial origin,
and later of economic origin. Also there is within the nation a struggle
between parties and sects, and sometimes between "sections" and
communities. Usually, however, the struggle within the nation is a
peaceful one and does not come to bloodshed.

Again, within each of these minor groups that we have mentioned struggle
and competition in some modified form goes on between its members. Thus
within a party or class there is apt to be a struggle or competition
between factions. There is, indeed, no human group that is free from
struggle or competition between its members, unless it be the family.
The family seems to be so constituted that normally there is no
competition between its members,--at least, there is good ground tor
believing that competition between the members of a family is to be
considered exceptional, or even abnormal.

From what has been said it is evident that competition and coöperation
are twin principles in the evolution of social groups. While competition
characterizes in the main the relation between groups, especially
independent political groups, and while coöperation characterizes in the
main the relation of the members of a given group to one another, still
competition and coöperation are correlatives in practically every phase
of the social life. Some degree of competition, for example, has to be
maintained by every group between its members if it is going to maintain
high standards of efficiency or of loyalty. If there were no competition
with respect to the matters that concern the inner life of groups, it is
evident that the groups would soon lose efficiency in leadership and in
membership and would sooner or later be eliminated. Consequently
society, from certain points of view, presents itself to the student at
the present time as a vast competition, while from other standpoints it
presents itself as a vast coöperation.

It follows from this that competition and coöperation are both equally
important in the life of society. It has been a favorite idea that
competition among human beings should be done away with, and that
coöperation should be substituted to take its place entirely. It is
evident, however, that this idea is impossible of realization. If a
social group were to check all competition between its members, it would
stop thereby the process of natural selection or of the elimination of
the unfit, and, as a consequence, would soon cease to progress. If some
scheme of artificial selection were substituted to take the place of
natural selection, it is evident that competition would still have to be
retained to determine who were the fittest. A society that would give
positions of trust and responsibility to individuals without imposing
some competitive test upon them would be like a ship built partially of
good and partially of rotten wood,--it would soon go to pieces.

This leads us to emphasize the continued necessity of selection in
society. No doubt natural selection is often a brutal and wasteful means
of eliminating the weak in human societies, and no doubt human reason
might devise superior means of bringing about the selection of
individuals which society must maintain. To some extent it has done this
through systems of education and the like, which are, in the main,
selective processes for picking out the most competent individuals to
perform certain social functions. But the natural competition, or
struggle between individuals, has not been done away with, especially in
economic matters, and it is evidently impossible to do away with it
until some vast scheme of artificial selection can take its place. Such
a scheme is so far in the future that it is hardly worth talking about.
The best that society can apparently do at the present time is to
regulate the natural competition between individuals, and this it is
doing increasingly.

What people rightfully object to is, not competition, but unregulated or
unfair competition. In the interest of solidarity, that is, in the
interest of the life of the group as a whole, all forms of competition
in human society should be so regulated that the rules governing the
competition may be known and the competition itself public. It is
evident that in politics and in business we are very far from this ideal
as yet, although society is unquestionably moving toward it.

A word in conclusion about the nature of moral codes and standards from
the social point of view. It is evident that moral codes from the social
point of view are simply formulations of standards of conduct which
groups find it convenient or necessary to impose upon their members.
Even morality, in an idealistic sense, seems from a sociological
standpoint to be those forms of conduct which conduce to social harmony,
to social efficiency, and so to the survival of the group. Groups,
however, as we have already pointed out, cannot do as they please. They
are always hard-pressed in competition by other groups and have to meet
the standards of efficiency which nature imposes. Morality, therefore,
is not anything arbitrarily designed by the group, but is a standard of
conduct which necessities of social survival require. In other words,
the right, from the point of view of natural science, is that which
ultimately conduces to survival, not of the individual, but of the group
or of the species. This is looking at morality, of course, from the
sociological point of view, and in no way denies the religious and
metaphysical view of morality, which may be equally valid from a
different standpoint.

Finally, we need to note that natural selection does not necessitate in
any mechanical sense certain conduct on the part of individuals or
groups. Rather, natural selection marks the limits of variation which
nature permits, and within those limits of variation there is a large
amount of freedom of choice, both to individuals and to groups. Human
societies, therefore, may be conceivably free to take one of several
paths of development at any particular point. But in the long run they
must conform to the ultimate conditions of survival; and this probably
means that the goal of their evolution is largely fixed for them. Human
groups are free only in the sense that they may go either backward or
forward on the path which the conditions of survival mark out for them.
They are free to progress or to perish. But social evolution in any
case, in the sense of social change either toward higher or toward lower
social adaptation, is a necessity that cannot be escaped. Sociology and
all social science is, therefore, a study not of what human groups would
like to do, but of what they must do in order to survive, that is, how
they can control their environment by utilizing the laws which govern
universal evolution.

From this brief and most elementary consideration of the bearings of
evolutionary theory upon social problems it is evident that evolution,
in the sense of what we know about the development of life and society
in the past, must be the guidepost of the sociologist. Human social
evolution, we repeat, rests upon and is conditioned by biological
evolution at every point. There is, therefore, scarcely any sanity in
sociology without the biological point of view.


SELECT REFERENCES


_For brief reading:_

FAIRBANKS, _Introduction to Sociology,_ Chaps. XIV.-XV.
JORDAN, _Foot-Notes to Evolution,_ Chaps. I.-III.
ELY, _Evolution of Industrial Society._ Part II, Chaps. I.-III.


_For more extended reading:_

DARWIN, _Descent of Man._
FISKE, _Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy._
WALLACE, _Darwinism._


_On the religious aspects of evolution:_

DRUMMOND, _Ascent of Man._
FISKE, _The Destiny of Man._
FISKE, _Through Nature to God._






CHAPTER III


THE FUNCTION OF THE FAMILY IN SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

Instead of continuing the study of social evolution in general it will
be best now, before we take up some of the problems of modern society,
to study the evolution of some important social institution, because in
so doing we can see more clearly the working of the biological and
psychological forces which have brought about the evolution of human
institutions. An institution, as has already been said, is a sanctioned
grouping or relation in society. Now, there can be scarcely any doubt
that the two most important institutions of human society are the family
and property. In Western civilization these take the form of the
monogamic family and of private property. It is upon these two
institutions that our civilization rests. The state is a third very
important institution in society, but it exists largely for the sake of
protecting the family and property.

Of the two institutions, the family and property, the family is without
doubt prior in time and more fundamental,--more important in human
association. We shall, therefore, study very briefly the origin and
development of the family as a human institution in order to illustrate
some of the principles of social evolution in general. But before we can
take up the question of the origin of the family it will be well for us
to see just what the function of this institution is in the human
society of the present, in order to justify the assertion just made that
it is the most important and fundamental institution of humanity.

The Family the Primary Social Institution.--Let us note first of all
that in society, as it exists at present, the family is the simplest
group capable of maintaining itself. It is, therefore, we may say, the
primary social structure. Because it contains both sexes and all ages it
is capable of reproducing itself, and so of reproducing society. For the
same reason it contains practically all social relations in miniature.
It has therefore often been called, and rightly, "the social microcosm".
The relations of superiority, subordination, and equality, which enter
so largely into the structure of all social institutions, are especially
clearly illustrated in the family in the relations of parents to
children, of children to parents, of parents to each other, and of
children to one another. Comte, for this reason, claimed that the family
was the unit of social organization, not the individual. However this
may be, it is evident that families do enter, as units, very largely
into our social and industrial life. While the tendency may be to make
the individual the unit of modern society, it is nevertheless true that
the family remains the simplest social structure in society, and from
it, in some sense, all other social relations whatsoever are evolved.

_The Family Differs from All Other Social Institutions_, however,
in two respects: First, its members have their places fixed in the
family group by their organic natures, that is, the relations of husband
and wife, parent and child, rest upon biological differences and
relations, so that one may say that the family is almost as much a
biological structure as it is a social structure. This is not, to any
extent, true of other institutions. Secondly, the family is not a
product, so far as we can see, of other forms of association, but rather
it itself produces these other forms of association. The family, in
other words, is not a result of social organization in general, but
seems rather to antedate both historically and logically the forms of
social life. It is not a product of society, but it itself produces
society.

THE PRIMARY FUNCTION OF THE FAMILY is continuing the life of the
species; that is, the primary function of the family is reproduction in
the sense of the birth and rearing of children. While other functions of
the family have been delegated in a large measure to other social
institutions, it is manifest that this function cannot be so delegated.
At least we know of no human society in which the birth and rearing of
children has not been the essential function of the family. From a
sociological point of view the childless family is a failure. While the
childless family may be of social utility to the individuals that form
it, nevertheless from the point of view of society such a family has
failed to perform its most important function and must be considered,
therefore, socially a failure.

The Function of the Family in Conserving the Social Order.--The family
is still the chief institution in society for transmitting from one
generation to another social possessions of all sorts. Property in the
form of land or houses or personal property, society permits the family
to pass along from generation to generation. Thus, also, the material
equipment for industry, that is capital, is so transmitted. While it is
obvious that the material goods of society are thus transmitted by the
family from one generation to another, it is perhaps not quite so
obvious, but equally true, that the spiritual possessions of the race
are also thus transmitted. For example, language is very largely
transmitted in the family, and students tell us that each family has its
own peculiar dialect. Literature, ideas, beliefs on government, law,
religion, moral standards, artistic tastes and appreciation--all of
these are still largely transmitted in society from one generation to
another through the family. While public institutions, such as
libraries, art galleries, universities, scientific museums, and the
like, are often adopted to conserve and transmit these spiritual
possessions of the race, yet it is safe to say that if it were possible
for society to depend upon these institutions to transmit knowledge,
artistic standards, and moral ideals, there would be great discontinuity
in social life. The family has been in the past, and is still, the great
conserving agency in human society, preserving and transmitting from
generation to generation both the material and spiritual possessions of
the race.

The Function of the Family in Social Progress.--While the conservative
function of the family is very obvious, its function in furthering
social progress is perhaps not so obvious. Nevertheless, this is one of
the greatest functions of the family life, because the family is the
chief or almost sole generator of altruism in human society, and it is
upon altruism that society depends for every upward advance in
coöperation. It is in the family that children learn to love and obey,
to be of service, and to respect one another's rights. The amount of
altruism in a given group has a very close relation to the quality of
its family life. If the family fails to teach the spirit of service and
self-sacrifice to its members, it is hardly probable that they will get
very much of that spirit from society at large. The ideal of a human
brotherhood has no meaning unless family affection gives it meaning. If
the family is the chief generator of altruism in human society and if
society depends upon altruism for each forward step in moral progress,
then the family is the chief source of social progress.

What we have said is a brief presentation of the claims of the family in
modern society to count not only as the primary but also as the most
important human institution. The family, it is evident, is charged by
society with the most important task, not only of producing the new
individuals in society, but of training each individual as he comes on
the stage of life, adjusting him to society in all of its aspects, such
as industry, government, and religion. If the family fails to perform
these important functions the chances are that unsocialized individuals
will take important places in society, and this means ultimately social
anarchy.

_The Family Life may be regarded as a School for Socializing the
Individual._ We need not trace in detail how the family does this for
the child. It is evident that the rudiments of morality, of government,
of religion, and even of industry and knowledge, must be learned by the
child in the family group. If the child fails, for example, to learn
morality, to get moral standards and ideals from his family life, he
stands but poor chance of getting them later in society. Again, if the
child fails to learn what law is and to get proper ideals of the
relation of the citizen to the state in his family life, there are good
prospects of his being numbered among the lawless elements of society
later. In the family, we repeat, the child first experiences all the
essential relations of society, learns the meaning of authority,
obedience, loyalty, and all the human virtues. Moreover, the family life
furnishes the moral and religious concepts which human society has set
before it as its goal. The ideal of human brotherhood, for example, is
manifestly derived from the family life; so also the religious idea of
the Divine Fatherhood. If a nation's family life fails to illustrate
these concepts, it is safe to say that they will not have great
influence in society generally. The nation whose family life decays,
therefore, rots at the core, dries up the springs of all social and
civic virtues.

The Family and Industry.--From what has been said in general terms it is
evident that the family has a very important relation to the industrial
activities of society, and industry a very important bearing upon the
family. Primitively all industry centered in the family. Modern
industry, as has been well said, is but an enormous expansion of
primitive housekeeping; that is, the preparation of food and clothing
and shelter by the primitive family group for its own existence is the
germ out of which all modern industry has developed. The very word
_economics_ means the science or the art of the household.

In primitive communities and in newly settled districts the family often
carries on all essential industrial activities. It produces all the raw
material, manufactures the finished products, and consumes the same. But
with the growth of complex societies there has come a great industrial
division of labor, and the family has delegated industrial activity
after activity to some other institution until at the present time the
modern family performs scarcely any industrial activities, except the
preparation of food for immediate consumption. Even this, however, in
modern cities seems about to be delegated to some other institution.

All that need be said at present about the delegation of the industrial
activities of the family to other industrial institutions is that the
movement is not one which need cause any anxiety so long as it does not
interfere with the essential function of the family, namely, the birth
and rearing of children. Even though children can no longer learn the
rudiments of industry in their home life, still it is possible through
manual and industrial training in our public schools to teach all
children this. And the removal of industries from the home, even such
essential industries as the preparation of food, is to be regarded as a
boon if it gives more time to the parents, especially to the mother, for
the proper care and bringing up of their children.

But the removal of industries from the family group has not always had
the beneficent effect of simply giving more time to the parents for the
proper care of their children. On the contrary, the removal of these
industries has often been followed by the removal of the parents
themselves from the home and the practical disintegration of the family.
This has been particularly the case where married women have gone into
factories. Under such circumstances children have often been neglected,
allowed to grow up on the streets, and to grow up as unsocialized
individuals in general. It would seem that the labor of married women
outside of the home should be forbidden by the state, except in certain
instances, with a view to assuring to the state itself a better
citizenship. The labor of children in factories and other industrial
institutions has sprung very largely from the same general causes. While
child labor may have the merit of giving the child some industrial
training, still it has been shown that it dwarfs the child in body and
mind, produces a one-sided development, fails to prepare for citizenship
in the higher sense, and so must be regarded as altogether an evil. Even
the labor of the young unmarried women in factories and shops, when they
should be preparing for the duties of wifehood and motherhood, is to
some extent an evil in society, though not by any means of the same
proportions as the labor of married women.

_The Subordination of Industry to the Family Life_ is necessary,
therefore, from a social point of view. Industry, as we have seen, was
primitively an adjunct of the family life, and all modern industry, if
rightfully developed, should be but an adjunct to the family life.
Industrial considerations must be, therefore, subordinate to domestic
considerations, that is, to considerations of the welfare of parents and
their children in the family group. One trouble with modern society is
that industry has come to dominate as an independent interest that
oftentimes does not recognize its reasonable and socially necessary
subordination to the higher interests of society. There can be no sane
and stable family life until we are willing to subordinate the
requirements of industry, that is, of wealth-getting, to the
requirements of the family for the good birth and proper rearing of
children.


SELECT REFERENCES


_For brief reading:_

HENDERSON, _Social Elements_, Chap. IV.
DEWEY AND TUFTS, _Ethics_, Chap. XXVI.
ADLER, _Marriage and Divorce_, Lecture I.


_For more extended reading:_

BOSANQUET, _The Family_.
SALEEBY, _Parenthood and Race Culture_.






CHAPTER IV


THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY

We must understand the biological roots of the family before we can
understand the family as an institution, and especially before we can
understand its origin. Let us note, then, briefly the chief biological
facts connected with the family life.

The Biological Foundations of the Family.--(1)_The Family rests upon
the Great Biological Fact of Sex._ While sex does not characterize
all animal forms, still it does characterize all except the simplest
forms of animal life. These simplest forms multiply or reproduce by
fission, but such asexual reproduction is almost entirely confined to
the unicellular forms of life. It may be inferred, therefore, that the
higher animal types could not have been evolved without sexual
reproduction, and something of the meaning or significance of sex in the
whole life process will, therefore, be helpful in understanding all of
the higher forms of evolution. Biologists tell us that the meaning or
purpose of sexual reproduction is to bring about greater organic
variation. Now variation, as we have seen, is the raw material upon
which natural selection acts to create the higher types. The immense
superiority of sexual reproduction over asexual reproduction is due to
the fact that it multiplies so greatly the elements of heredity in each
new organism, for under sexual reproduction every new organism has two
parents, four grandparents, and so on, each of which perhaps contributes
something to its heredity. The biological meaning of sex, then, is that
it is a device of nature to bring about organic variation. From the
point of view of the social life we may note also that sex adds greatly
to its variety, enriching it with numerous fruitful variations which
undoubtedly further social evolution. The bareness and monotony of a
social life without sex can readily be imagined.

While the differences between the sexes have been mainly elaborated
through the differences of reproductive function, yet these differences
have come to be fundamental to the whole nature of the organism. In the
higher animals, therefore, the sexes differ profoundly in many ways from
each other. Biologists tell us that the chief difference between the
male and female organism is a difference in metabolism, that is, in the
rapidity of organic change which goes on within the body. In the male
metabolism is much more rapid than in the female; hence the male
organism is said to be more katabolic. In the female the rapidity of
organic change is less; hence the female is said to be more anabolic.
Put in more familiar terms, the male tends to expend energy, is more
active, hence also stronger; the female tends more to store up energy,
is more passive, conservative, and weaker. These fundamental differences
between the sexes express themselves in many ways in the social life.
The differences between man and woman, therefore, are not to be thought
of as due simply to social customs and usages, the different social
environment of the two sexes, but are even more due to a radical and
fundamental difference in their whole nature. The belief that the two
sexes would become like each other in character if given the same
environment is, therefore, erroneous. That these differences are
original, or inborn, and not acquired, may be readily seen by observing
children of different sex. Even from their earliest years boys are more
active, restless, energetic, destructive, untidy, and disobedient, while
little girls are quieter, less restless, less destructive, neater, more
orderly, and more obedient. These different innate qualities fit the
sexes naturally for different functions in human society, and there is,
therefore, a natural division of labor between them from the first.
Indeed, the division of labor between the two sexes may be said to be
the fundamental division of labor in human society.

The causes which produce sex in the individual are not known to any
extent and are probably beyond the control of man. In each species the
relative number of the two sexes is fixed by nature, probably through
some obscure working of natural selection, and in practically all of the
higher species of animals, man included, the number of the two sexes is
relatively equal. In human society much depends upon this relative
numerical equality of the two sexes. Hence it can be readily seen that
it is fortunate that man does not know how to control the sex of
offspring, for if he did the numerical equality of the two sexes might
be disturbed and serious social results would follow.

(2) _The Influence of Parental Care._ Sex alone could never have
produced the family in the sense of a relatively permanent group of
parents and offspring. We do not begin to find the family until we get
to those higher types where we find some parental care. In the lowest
types the relation between the sexes is momentary and the survival of
offspring is secured simply through the production of enormous numbers.
Thus the sturgeon, a low type of fish, produces between one and two
million of eggs at a single spawning, from which it is estimated that
not more than a dozen individuals survive till maturity is reached. Thus
sexual reproduction of itself necessitates no parental care and in
itself could give rise in no way to the family; but quite low in the
scale of life we begin to find some parental care as a device to protect
immature offspring and secure their survival without the expenditure of
such an enormous amount of energy in mere physiological reproduction.
Even among the fishes we find some that watch over the eggs after they
are spawned and care for their young by leading them to suitable feeding
grounds. In such cases a much smaller number of young need to be
produced in order that a few may survive until maturity is reached. In
the mammals the mother, obviously, must care for the young for some
time, since mammals are animals that suckle their young. But this care
of the young by a single parent only foreshadows the family as we
understand it. Among the mammals it is not until we reach the higher
types that we find care of offspring by both parents,--a practice,
however, which is common among the birds. It is evident that as soon as
both parents are concerned in the care of the offspring they have a much
better chance of survival. Hence, natural selection favors the growth of
this type of group life and develops powerful instincts to keep male and
female together till after the birth and rearing of offspring. Such we
find to be the condition among many of the higher mammals, such as some
of the carnivora, and especially among the monkeys and apes and man.

If it is allowable at this point to generalize from the facts given, it
must be said that the family life is essentially a device of nature for
the preservation of offspring through a more or less prolonged infancy.
The family group and the instincts upon which it rests were undoubtedly,
therefore, instituted by natural selection. Summing up, we may say,
then, the animal family group owes its existence, first, to the
production of child or immature forms that need more or less prolonged
care; secondly, to the prolongation of this period of immaturity in the
higher animals, and especially in man; thirdly, to the development,
parallel with these two causes, of parental instincts which keep male
and female together for the care of the offspring. It is evident, then,
that the family life rests, not upon sex attraction, but upon the fact
of the child and the corresponding psychological fact of parental
instinct. The family, then, has been created by the very conditions of
life itself and is not a man-made institution.

The Origin of the Family in the Human Species.--Two great theories of
the origin of the family in the human species have in the past been more
or less accepted, and these we must now examine and criticize. First,
the traditional theory that the human family life was from the beginning
a pure monogamy. Secondly, the so-called evolutionary theory that the
human family life arose from confused if not promiscuous sex relations.
The first of these theories, favored both by the Bible and Aristotle,
held undisputed sway down to the middle of the nineteenth century. Then,
after the publication of Darwin's _Origin of Species_ in 1859,
certain social theorists began to put forward the second theory in the
name of evolution. In order that we may see precisely what the origin of
the human family life was, and its primitive form, we must now proceed
to criticize these two theories, especially the last, which is known as
the hypothesis of a primitive state of promiscuity.

_The Habits of the Higher Animals_. We have already spoken of the
origin of the family group in the animal world generally, but it must be
admitted that there are some difficulties in arguing directly from the
lower animals to man. Man is so separated from the lower animals through
having passed through many higher stages of an independent evolution
that in many respects his life is peculiar to itself. This is true
especially of his family life. If we survey the whole range of animal
life and then the whole range of human life, we find that there are but
two or three striking similarities between the family life of man and
that of the brutes, but a great many striking dissimilarities. The
similarities may be summed up by saying that man exhibits in common with
all the animals the phenomena of courtship, that is, of the male seeking
to win the female, also the phenomenon of male jealousy, and we may
perhaps add an instinctive aversion to crossing with the other species.
These characteristics of his family life man shares with the brutes
below him. There are, however, many things peculiar to the human family
life that are found in no animal species below man. The most striking of
these differences may be mentioned. (1) Man has no pairing season, as
practically all other animals have. (2) The number of young born in the
human species is on the whole much smaller than in any other animal
species. (3) The dependence of offspring upon parents is far longer in
the human species than in any other species. (4) Man has an antipathy to
incest or close inbreeding which seems to be instinctive. This is not
found clearly in any animal species below man. (5) There is a tendency
among human beings to artificial adornment during the period of
courtship, but not to natural ornament to any extent, as among many
animal species. (6) The indorsement of society is almost invariably
sought, both among uncivilized and civilized peoples, before the
establishment of a new family--usually through the forms of a religious
marriage ceremony. (7) Chastity in women, especially married women, is
universally insisted upon, both among uncivilized and civilized peoples,
as the basis of human family life. (8) There is a feeling of modesty or
of shame as regards matters of sex among the human beings. (9) In
humanity we find, besides animal lust, spiritual affection, or love, as
a bond of union between the two sexes.

None of these peculiarities of human family life are found in the family
life of any animal species below man. It might seem, therefore, that
man's family life must be regarded as a special creation unconnected
with the family life of the brutes below him. But this view is hardly
probable, rather is impossible from the standpoint of evolution. We must
say that these peculiarities of human family life are to be explained
through the fact that man has passed through many more stages of
evolution, particularly of intellectual evolution, than any of the
animals below him. If we examine these peculiarities of man's family
life carefully, we will see that they all can be explained through
natural selection and man's higher intellectual development. That man
has no pairing season, has fewer offspring born, and a longer period of
dependence of the offspring upon parents, and the like, is directly to
be explained through natural selection; while seeking the indorsement of
society before forming a new family, sexual modesty, tendencies to
artificial adornment, and the like, are to be explained through man's
self-consciousness and higher intellectual development, also through the
fuller development of his social instincts. The gap between the human
family life and brute family life is, therefore, not an unbridgeable
one.

That this is so, we see most clearly when we consider the family life of
the anthropoid or manlike apes--man's nearest cousins in the animal
world. All of these apes, of which the chief representatives are the
gorilla, orangutan, and the chimpanzee, live in relatively permanent
family groups, usually monogamous. These family groups are quite human
in many of their characteristics, such as the care which the male parent
gives to the mother and her offspring, and the seeming affection which
exists between all members of the group. Such a group of parents and
offspring among the higher apes is, moreover, a relatively permanent
affair, children of different ages being frequently found along with
their parents in such groups. So far as the evidence of animals next to
man, therefore, goes, there is no reason for supposing that the human
family life sprang from confused or promiscuous sex relations in which
no permanent union between male and female parent existed. On the
contrary, there is every reason to believe, as Westermarck says, that
human family life is an inheritance from man's apelike progenitor.

The Evidence from the Lower Human Races.--The evidence afforded by the
lowest peoples in point of culture even more clearly, if anything,
refutes the hypothesis of a primitive state of promiscuity. The habits
or customs of the lowest peoples were not well known previous to the
nineteenth century. Therefore it was possible for such a theory as the
patriarchal theory of the primitive family to remain generally accepted,
as we have already said, down to the middle of the nineteenth century.
This was the theory that the oldest or most primitive type of human
family life is that depicted in the opening pages of the Book of
Genesis, namely, a family life in which the father or eldest male of the
family group is the absolute ruler of the group and practically owner of
all persons and property. The belief that this was the primitive type of
the human family life was first attacked by a German-Swiss philologist
by the name of Bachofen in a work entitled _Das Mutterrecht_ (The
Matriarchate), published in 1861, in which he argued that antecedent to
the patriarchal period was a matriarchal period, in which women were
dominant socially and politically, and in which relationships were
traced through mothers only. Bachofen got his evidence for this theory
from certain ancient legends, such as that of the Amazons, and other
remains in Greek and Roman literature, which seemed to point to a period
antecedent to the patriarchal.

In 1876 Mr. J.F. McLennan, a Scotch lawyer, put forth, independently,
practically the same theory, basing it upon certain legal survivals
which he found among many peoples. With Bachofen, he argued that this
matriarchal period must have been characterized by promiscuous relations
of the sexes. In 1877 Mr. Lewis H. Morgan, an American ethnologist and
sociologist, put forth again, independently, practically the same
theory, basing it upon an extensive study of the North American Indian
tribes. Morgan had lived among the Iroquois Indians for years and had
mastered their system of relationship, which previously had puzzled the
whites. He found that they traced relationship through mothers only, and
not at all along the male line. This method of reckoning relationship,
moreover, he found also characterized practically all of the North
American Indian tribes, and he argued that the only explanation of it
was that originally sexual relations were of such an unstable or
promiscuous character that they would not permit of tracing descent
through fathers.

From these theories sociological writers put forth the conclusion that
the primitive state was one of promiscuity, or, as Sir John Lubbock
called it in his _Origin of Civilization_, one of "communism in
women." Post, a German student of comparative jurisprudence, for
example, summed up the theory by saying that "monogamous marriage
originally emerged everywhere from pure communism in women, through the
intermediate stages of limited communism in women, polyandry, and
polygyny." Even Herbert Spencer in his _Principles of Sociology_,
while he avoided accepting such an extreme theory, asserted that in the
beginning sex relations were confused and unregulated, and that all
forms of marriage--polyandry, polygyny, monogamy, and promiscuity--
existed alongside of one another and that monogamy survived through
its being the superior form.

Before giving a criticism in detail of this theory let us note whether
the evidence from the lowest peoples confirms it. The lowest peoples in
point of culture are not the North American Indians nor the African
Negroes, but certain isolated groups that live almost in a state of
nature, without any attempt to cultivate the soil or to control nature
in other respects. Such are the Bushmen of South Africa, the Australian
Aborigines, the Negritos of the Philippine Islands and of the Andaman
Islands, the Veddahs of Ceylon, and the Fuegians of South America. Now
all of these peoples, with a possible exception, practice monogamy and
live in relatively stable family groups. Their monogamy, however, is not
of the type which we find in patriarchal times or among civilized
peoples, but is a simple pairing monogamy, husband and wife remaining
together indefinitely if children are born, but if no children are born,
separation may easily take place. Westermarck in his _History of Human
Marriage_ has reviewed at length all of the evidence from these lower
peoples and shows undoubtedly that nothing approaching promiscuity
existed among them. Promiscuity is apt to be found at a higher stage of
social development, and is especially apt to be found among the nature
peoples after the white man has visited them and demoralized their
family life. But in all these cases the existence of promiscuity is
manifestly something exceptional and abnormal. Perhaps civilized peoples
such as the Romans of the decadence have more nearly approximated the
condition of promiscuity than any savage people of which we have
knowledge. At any rate, one must conclude that the lowest existing
savages found in the nineteenth century had definite forms of family
life, and that the type usually found was the simple pairing monogamy
which we have just mentioned.

Objections to the Hypothesis of a Primitive State of Promiscuity.--We
may now briefly sum up the main criticisms of this theory of a primitive
state of promiscuity, not only as we may derive them from inductive
study of the higher animals and the lower peoples, but also as we may
deduce them from known psychological and biological facts or principles.

(1) In the first place, then, the animals next to man, namely, the
anthropoid apes, do not show a condition of promiscuity.

(2) The evidence from the lower peoples does not show that such a
condition exists or has ever existed among them.

(3) A third argument against this hypothesis may be gained from what we
know of primitive economic conditions. Under the most primitive
conditions, in which man had no mastery over nature, food supply was
relatively scarce, and as a rule only very small groups of people could
live together. The smallness of primitive groups, on account of the
scarcity of food supply, would prevent anything like promiscuity on a
large scale.

(4) A fourth argument of a deductive nature is that the jealousy of the
male, which characterizes all higher animals and especially man, would
prevent anything like the existence of sexual promiscuity. The tendency
of man would have been to appropriate one or more women for himself and
drive away all rivals. Long ago Darwin argued that this would prevent
anything like the existence of a general state of promiscuity.

(5) A fifth argument against this theory may be got from the general
biological fact that sexual promiscuity tends to pathological conditions
unfavorable to fecundity, that is, fertility, or the birth of offspring.
 Physicians have long ago ascertained this fact, and the modern
prostitute gives illustration of it by the fact that she has few or no
children. Among the lower animal species, in which some degree of
promiscuity obtains, moreover, powerful instincts keep the sexes apart
except at the pairing season. Now, no such instincts exist in man.
Promiscuity in man would, therefore, greatly lessen the birth rate, and
any group that practiced it to any extent would soon be eliminated in
competition with other groups that did not practice it.

(6) We have finally the general social fact that promiscuity would lead
to the neglect of children. Promiscuity means that the male parent does
not remain with the female parent to care for the offspring and,
therefore, in the human species it would mean that the care of children
would be thrown wholly upon the mother. This means that the children
would have less chance of surviving. Not only would promiscuity lead to
lessening the birth rate, but it would lead to a much higher mortality
in children born. This is found to be a striking fact wherever we find
any degree of promiscuity among any people. Hence, promiscuity would
soon exterminate any people that practiced it extensively in competition
with other peoples that did not practice it.

From all of these lines of argument, without going over the evidence in
greater detail, it seems reasonable to conclude with Westermarck "that
the hypothesis of a primitive state of promiscuity has no foundation in
fact and is essentially unscientific." The facts put forth in support of
the theory do not justify the conclusion, Westermarck says, that
promiscuity has ever been a general practice among a single people and
much less that it was the primitive state. Promiscuity is found,
however, more or less in the form of sexual irregularities or immorality
among all peoples; more often, however, among the civilized than among
the uncivilized, but among no people has it ever existed unqualified by
more enduring forms of sex relation. Moreover, because promiscuity
breaks up the social bonds, throws the burden of the care of children
wholly upon the mother, and lessens the birth rate, we are justified in
concluding that promiscuity is essentially an antisocial practice. This
agrees with the facts generally shown by criminology and sociology, that
the elements practicing promiscuity to any great extent in modern
societies are those most closely related with the degenerate and
criminal elements. Those elements, in other words, in modern society
that practice promiscuity are on the road to extinction, and if a people
generally were to practice it there is no reason to believe that such a
people would meet with any different fate.

_The Earliest Form of the Family Life in the Human Species_,
therefore, is probably that of the simple pairing monogamous family
found among many of the higher animals, especially the anthropoid apes,
and also found among the lower peoples. This primitive monogamy,
however, as we have already seen, was not accompanied by the social,
legal, and religious elements that the historic monogamic family has
largely rested upon. On the contrary, this primitive monogamy rested
solely upon an instinctive basis, and, as we have seen, unless children
were born it was apt to be relatively unstable. Permanency in family
relations among primitive peoples depended largely upon the birth of
children. Thus we find confirmed our conclusion drawn some time ago that
family life rests primarily upon the parental instinct. That it still so
rests is shown by the fact, as we shall see later, that divorce is many
times more common among couples that have no children than among those
that have children.

SOME GENERAL CONCLUSIONS, both of theoretical and practical bearing, may
here be pointed out. We have seen that the biological processes of life
have created the family, and that the family, as an institution, rests
upon these biological conditions. Hence it is not too much to say,
first, that the family is not a man-made institution; and, secondly,
that it rests upon certain fundamental instincts of human nature. Now,
both of these statements are also true to a certain extent as to human
society in general. There is a sense in which social organization is not
wholly man-made, and it is true that all human institutions rest to some
extent upon human instincts. This is not saying, of course, that man has
not modified and may not modify social organization and human
institutions through his reason, but it is saying that the essential
elements in human institutions and in the social order must correspond
to the conditions of life generally and to the instincts which natural
selection has implanted in the species. To attempt to reorganize human
society or to reconstruct institutions regardless of the biological
conditions of life, or regardless of human instincts, is to meet with
certain failure.

A practical conclusion which may be drawn also is that those people who
advocate sexual promiscuity in present society, or free love, as they
please to style it, are advocating a condition which would result in the
elimination of any group that practiced it. Promiscuity, or even great
instability in the family life, as we have already seen, would lead to
the undermining of everything upon which a higher civilization rests.
The people in modern society who advocate such theories as free love,
therefore, are more dangerous than the worst anarchist or the most
revolutionary socialist. In other words, the modern attack upon the
family is more of a menace to all that is worth while in human life than
all attacks upon government and property, although it is not usually
resented as such; and it is one of the most serious signs of the times
that many intellectual people have indorsed such views. We must
reemphasize, therefore, the fact that the family is the central
institution of human society, that industry and the state must
subordinate themselves to its interest. Neither the state nor industry
has had much to do with the origin of the family, and neither the state
nor industry may safely determine its forms independent of the
biological requirements for human survival. Moreover, it is evident that
human society from the beginning has in more or less instinctive, and
also in more or less conscious, ways attempted to regulate the relations
between the sexes with a view to controlling the reproductive process.
While material civilization is mainly a control over the food process,
moral civilization involves a control over the reproductive process,
that is, over the birth and rearing of children; and such control over
the reproductive process, which has certainly been one of the aims of
all social organization in the past, whether of savage peoples or of
civilized peoples, evidently precludes anything like the toleration of
promiscuity or even of free love.


SELECT REFERENCES


_For brief reading:_

WESTERMARCK, _History of Human Marriage_, Chaps. I-VI.
HOWARD, _History of Matrimonial Institutions_, Vol. I, Chaps. I-III
HEINEMAN, _Physical Basis of Civilization_, Chaps. IV-VII.


_For more extended reading:_

CRAWLEY, _The Mystic Rose: A Study of Primitive Marriage_.
GEDDES AND THOMSON, _Evolution of Sex_.
LETOURNEAU, _The Evolution of Marriage_.
MORGAN, _Ancient Society_.
STARCKE, _The Primitive Family_.
SPENCER, _Principles of Sociology_, Vol. I.






CHAPTER V


THE FORMS OF THE FAMILY

The family as an institution has varied greatly in its forms from age to
age and from people to people. This is what we should expect, seeing
that all organic structures are variable. Such variations in human
institutions are due partially to the influences of the environment,
partially to the state of knowledge, and partially to many other causes
as yet not well understood. The family illustrates in greater or less
degree the working of these causes of variation and of change in human
institutions.

The Maternal and Paternal Families.--As regards the general form of the
family we have to note first of all the two great forms which we may
characterize respectively as "the maternal family" and "the paternal
family." As we have already seen, Bachofen, Morgan, and others
discovered a condition of human society in which relationship was traced
through mothers only, and in which property or authority descended along
the female line rather than along the male line. Further investigation
and research have shown that up to recent times, say up to fifty years
ago, one half of all the peoples of the world, if we reckon them by
nations and tribes rather than by numbers, practiced this system of
reckoning kinship through mothers only, and passed property and
authority down along the female line. Ethnologists and sociologists have
practically concluded, from the amount of evidence now collected, that
this maternal or metronymic system was the primitive system of tracing
relationships, and that it was succeeded among the European peoples by
the paternal system so long ago that the transition from the one to the
other has been forgotten, except as some trace of it has been preserved
in customs, legends, and the like.

Among many tribes of the North American Indians this metronymic or
maternal system was peculiarly well-developed. Children took their
mother's name, not their father's name; belonged to their mother's clan,
not their father's clan; and the chief transmitted his authority, if
hereditary, not to his own son, but to his eldest sister's son. The
relatives on the father's side, indeed, were quite ignored. Frequently
the maternal uncle had more legal authority over the children than their
own father, seeing that the children belonged to his clan, that is, to
their mother's clan.

Now, Bachofen claimed not only that in this stage was kinship reckoned
through mothers only, but that women were dominant socially and
politically; that there existed a true matriarchy, or rule of the
mothers. Do the facts support Bachofen's theory? Let us see. The
Iroquois Indians, among whom Morgan lived, were a typical maternal or
metronymic people. Among them, without any doubt, the women had a
position of influence socially and even politically which often is not
found among peoples of higher culture. For example, among the Iroquois
the government of the clan was in the hands of four women councilors
(Matrons), who were elected by all the adults in the clan. These four
women councilors, however, elected a Peace Sachem, who carried out the
will of the clan in all matters pertaining to peace generally. Moreover,
the councilors of the several clans, four fifths of whom were women, met
together to form the Tribal Council; but in this Tribal Council the
women sat separate, not participating in the deliberations, but
exercising only a veto power on the decisions of the men. In matters of
war, however, government was intrusted to two war chiefs elected from
the tribe generally, the women here only having the right to veto the
decision of the tribe to enter upon the warpath. Thus we see that while
the women of the Iroquois Indians had a great deal of social and
political influence, the actual work of government was largely turned
over by them to the men, and especially was this true of directing the
affairs of the tribe in time of war. There is no doubt, however, that in
the maternal stage of social evolution women had an influence in
domestic, religious, and social matters much greater than they had at
many later stages of social development. Among the Zuni of New Mexico,
for example, another well-developed maternal people, marriage is always
arranged by the bride's parents. The husband goes to live with his wife,
and is practically a guest in his wife's house all his life long, she
alone having the right of divorce. Indeed, among all maternal peoples
the rule is that the husband goes to live with the wife, and not the
wife with the husband, the children, as we have already seen, keeping
the mother's name and belonging to her kindred or clan.

Nevertheless we cannot agree with Bachofen that a true matriarchy, or
government by women, ever existed. On the contrary, among all of these
maternal peoples, while the women may have much influence socially and
politically, the men, on account of their superior strength, are
intrusted with the work not only of protecting and providing for the
families and driving away enemies, but also largely with the work of
maintaining the internal government and order of the people. Strictly
speaking, therefore, there has never been a matriarchal stage of social
evolution, but rather a maternal or metronymic stage.

We have already said that this stage was probably the primitive one. How
are we to explain, then, that primitive man reckoned kinship through
mothers only? Was this due, as Morgan thought, to a primitive practice
of promiscuity which prevented tracing relationships through fathers?
The reply is, that among the many maternal peoples now well known, among
whom relationships are traced through mothers only, we find no evidence
of the practice of general promiscuity now or even in remote times. The
North American Indians, for example, had quite definite forms of the
family life and were very far removed from the practice of promiscuity,
though they traced relationship through mothers only. It is evident that
the causes of the maternal family and the maternal system of
relationship are not so simple as Morgan supposed. What, then, were the
causes of the maternal system? It is probable that man in the earliest
times did not know the physiological connection between father and
child. The physiological connection between mother and child, on the
other hand, was an obvious fact which required no knowledge of
physiology to establish; therefore, nothing was more natural than for
primitive man to recognize that the child was of the mother's blood, but
not of the father's blood. Therefore, the child belonged to the mother's
people and not to the father's people. If it be asked whether it is
possible that there could be any human beings so ignorant that they do
not know the physiological connection between father and child, the
reply is, that this is apparently the case among a number of very
primitive peoples, even down to recent times. It is not infrequent among
these peoples to find conception and childbirth attributed to the
influence of the spirits, rather than to relations between male and
female. While, therefore, a social connection between the father and the
children was recognized, leading the father to provide in all ways for
his children, as fathers do whether among civilized or uncivilized
peoples, yet the blood relationship between the father and the child
could not have been clear in the most primitive times.

Perhaps an even more efficient cause, however, of the maternal system
was the fact that the mother in primitive times was the stable element
in the family life, the constant center of the family. The husband was
frequently away from home, hunting or fighting, and oftentimes failed to
return. Nothing was more natural, therefore, than that the child should
be reckoned as belonging to the mother, take her name and belong to her
kindred or clan. Moreover, after the custom of naming children from
mothers and reckoning them as belonging to the mother's clan was
established, it could not be displaced by the mere discovery of the
physiological connection between the father and the child. On the
contrary social habits, like habits in the individual, tend to persist
until they work badly. We find, therefore, the maternal system
persisting among peoples who for many generations had come fully to
recognize the physiological connection of father and child. Indeed, the
maternal system could never have been done away with if social evolution
had not brought about new and complex conditions which caused the system
to break down and to be replaced by the paternal system.

_The Paternal or Patriarchal Family._ At a certain stage we find,
then, that a vast revolution took place in human society, especially in
the family life, and the family and society generally came to be
organized more definitely in regard to the male element. At a certain
period, indeed, we find that the authority of the husband and father in
the family has become supreme, and that he is practically owner of all
persons and property of the family group, the wife and children being
reduced, if not to the position of property, at least to the position of
subject persons. This is the patriarchal family, classical pictures of
which we find set forth in the pages of the Old Testament. How, then,
did the transition take place from the maternal system, in which the
mother was so important in the family, to the paternal system, in which
the father was so all-important? What were the causes which brought
about the breakdown of the maternal system and the gradual development
of the patriarchal family? Some of these causes we can clearly make out
from the study of social history.

(1) War was unquestionably a cause of the breakdown of the maternal
system through the fact that women were captured in war, held as slaves,
and made wives or concubines by their captors. These captured wives were
regarded as the property of the captor. Any children born to them were,
therefore, also regarded as the property of the captor. Furthermore,
these captured wives were separated from their kindred, and their
children could not possibly belong to any clan except their husband's.
Manifestly this cause could not have worked in the earliest times, when
slave captives were not valuable; but as soon as slavery became
instituted in any form, then women slaves were particularly valued, not
only for their labor, but because they might be either concubines or
wives. It is evident, then, that war and slavery would thus indirectly
tend to undermine the maternal system.

(2) Wife purchase would operate in the same way. Among peoples that had
developed a commercial life as well as slavery it early became the
practice to purchase wives. It is evident that these purchased wives
would be regarded as a sort of property, and the husband would naturally
claim the children as belonging to him. Among certain North American
Indians we find exactly this state of affairs. If a man married a wife
without paying the purchase price for her, then her children took her
name and belonged to her clan; but if he had purchased her, say with a
number of blankets, then the children took his name and belonged to his
clan.

(3) The decisive cause, however, of the breakdown of the maternal system
was the development of the pastoral stage of industry. Now, the grazing
of flocks and herds requires considerable territory and necessitates
small and compact groups widely separated from one another. Hence, in
the pastoral stage the wife must go with the husband and be far removed
from the influence and authority of her own kindred. This gave the
husband greater power over his wife. Moreover, the care of flocks and
herds accentuated the value of the male laborer, while primitively woman
had been the chief laborer. In the pastoral stage the man had the main
burden of caring for the flocks and herds. Under such circumstances
nothing was more natural than that the authority of the owner of the
family property should gradually become supreme in all matters, and we
find, therefore, among all pastoral peoples that the family is itself a
little political unit, the children taking the father's name, property
and authority passing down along the male line, while the eldest living
male is usually the ruler of the whole group.

(4) After all these causes came another factor--ancestor worship. While
ancestor worship exists to some extent among maternal peoples, it is
usually not well-developed for some reason or other until the paternal
stage is reached. Ancestor worship, being the worship of the departed
ancestors as heroes, seems to develop more readily where the line of
ancestors are males. It may be suggested that the male ancestor is apt
to be a more heroic figure than the female ancestor. At any rate, when
ancestor worship became fully developed it powerfully tended to
reenforce the authority of the patriarch, because he was, as the eldest
living ancestor, the representative of the gods upon earth, therefore
his power became almost divine. Religion thus finally came in to place
the patriarchal family upon a very firm basis.

Thus we see how each of these two great forms, the maternal family and
the paternal family, arose out of natural conditions, and therefore they
may be said to represent two great stages in the social evolution of
man. It is hardly necessary to point out that civilized societies are
now apparently entering upon a third stage, in which there will be
relative equality given to the male and the female elements that go to
make up the family.

Polyandry.--We must notice now the various forms of marriage by which
the family has been constituted among different peoples and in different
ages. Marriage, like the family itself, is variable, and an indefinite
number of forms may be found among various peoples. We shall notice,
however, only the three leading forms,--polyandry, polygyny, and
monogamy,--and attempt to show the natural conditions which favor each.
It is evident that if we assume that the primitive form of the family
was that of a simple pairing monogamy, the burden is laid upon us to
show how such different types as polyandry and polygyny arose.

Polyandry, or the union of one woman with several men, is a relatively
rare form of marriage and the family, found only in certain isolated
regions of the world. It is particularly found in Tibet, a barren and
inhospitable plateau north of India and forming a part of the Chinese
Empire. It is also found in certain other isolated mountainous regions
in India, and down to recent times also in Arabia. In none of these
places does it exist exclusively, but rather alongside of monogamy and
perhaps other forms of the family. Thus in Tibet the upper classes
practice polygyny and monogamy, while among the lower classes we find
polyandry and monogamy. In all these regions where polyandry occurs,
moreover, it is to be noted that the conditions of life are harsh and
severe. Tibet is an exceptionally inhospitable region, with a climate of
arctic rigor, the people living mainly by grazing. Under such
circumstances it is conceivably difficult for one man to support and
protect a family. At any rate, the form of polyandry which we find in
Tibet suggests that such economic conditions may have been the main
cause of its existence. Ordinarily in Tibet a polyandrous family is
formed by an older brother taking a wife, and then admitting his younger
brothers into partnership with him. The older brother is frequently
absent from home, looking after the flocks, and in his absence one of
the younger brothers assumes the headship of the family. Under such
circumstances we can see how the natural human instincts which would
oppose polyandry under ordinary circumstances, namely, the jealousy of
the male, might become greatly modified, or cease to act altogether.
Certain other conditions besides economic ones might also favor the
existence of polyandry, such as the scarcity of women. Summing up, we
can say, then, that this rare form of the family seems to have as its
causes: (1) In barren and inhospitable countries the labor of one man is
sometimes found not sufficient to support a family. (2) Also there
probably exists in such regions an excess of males. This might be due to
one of two causes: First, the practice of exposing female infants might
lead to a scarcity of women; secondly, in such regions it is found that
from causes not well understood a larger number of males are born. It
may be noted as a general fact that when the conditions of life are hard
in human society, owing to famine, war, or barrenness of the soil, a
larger number of male births take place. We may therefore infer that
this would disturb the numerical proportion of the sexes in such
regions. (3) A third cause may be suggested as having something to do
with the matter, namely, that habits of close inbreeding, or
intermarriage, might perhaps tend to overcome the natural repugnance to
such a relation. Moreover, close inbreeding also, as the experiments of
stock-breeders show, would tend to produce a surplus of male births, and
so would act finally in the same way as the second cause.

POLYGYNY, [Footnote: The word "polygamy" is too broad in its meaning to
use as a scientific term for this form of the family. "Polygamy" comes
from two Greek words meaning "much married;" hence it includes
"polyandry" (having several husbands) and "polygyny" (having several
wives).] or the union of one man with several women, is a much more
common form of marriage. It is, in fact, to be found sporadically among
all peoples and in all ages. It has perhaps existed at least
sporadically from the most primitive times, because we find that at
least one of the anthropoid apes, namely, the gorilla, practices it to
some extent. It is manifest, however, that it could not have existed to
any extent among primitive men, except where food supply was
exceptionally abundant. In the main, polygyny is a later development,
then, which comes in when some degree of wealth has been accumulated,
that is, sufficient food supply to make it possible for one man to
support several families. Polygyny came in especially after women came
to be captured in war and kept as slaves or wives. The practice of wife
capture, indeed, and the honor attached to the custom, had much to do in
making the practice of polygyny common among certain peoples. Wherever
slavery has existed, we may also note, polygyny, either in its legal
form or in its illegal form of concubinage, has flourished. Polygyny,
indeed, is closely related with the institution of slavery and is
practically coextensive with it. In the ancient world it existed among
the Hebrews and among practically all of the peoples of the Orient, and
also sporadically among our own Teutonic ancestors. In modern times
polygyny still exists among all the Mohammedan peoples and to a greater
or less degree among all semicivilized peoples. It exists in China in
the form of concubinage. It even exists in the United States, for all
the evidence seems to show that the Utah Mormons still practice polygyny
to some extent, although it may be doubted whether polygynous unions are
being formed among them at the present time.

Two facts always need to be borne in mind regarding polygyny: First,
that wherever it is practiced it is relatively confined to the upper and
wealthy classes, for the reason that the support of more than one family
is something which only the wealthy classes in a given society could
assume. Secondly, it follows that under ordinary circumstances only a
small minority of a given population practice polygyny, even in
countries in which it is sanctioned. In Mohammedan countries like Turkey
and Egypt, for example, it is estimated that not more than five per cent
of the families are polygynous, while in other regions the percentage
seems to be still smaller. The reason for this is not only the economic
one just mentioned, but that everywhere the sexes are relatively equal
in numbers, and therefore it is impossible for polygyny to become a
widespread general custom. If some men have more than one wife it is
evident that other men will probably have to forego marriage entirely.
This is not saying that under certain circumstances, namely, the
importation of large numbers of women, a higher per cent of polygynous
families may not exist. It is said that among the negroes on the west
coast of Africa the number of polygynous families reaches as high as
fifty per cent, owing to the fact that female slaves are largely
imported into that district, and that they serve not only as wives, but
do the bulk of the agricultural labor, the male negro preferring female
slaves, who can do his work and be wives at the same time, to male
slaves. But such cases as these are altogether exceptional and
manifestly could not become general.

Summing up, we may say that the causes of polygyny are, then:

(1) First of all, the brutal lust of man. No doubt man's animal
propensities have had much to do with the existence of this form of the
family. Nevertheless, while male sensuality is at the basis of polygyny,
it would be a mistake to think that sensuality is an adequate
explanation in all cases. On the contrary, we find many other causes,
chiefly, perhaps, economic, operating also to favor the development of
polygyny.

(2) One of these is wife capture, as we have already seen. The captured
women in war were held as trophies and slaves, and later became wives or
concubines. Among all peoples at a certain stage the honor of wife
capture has alone been a prolific cause of polygyny.

(3) Another cause, after slavery became developed, was the high value
set on women as laborers. Among many barbarous peoples the women do the
main part of the work. They are more tractable as slaves, and
consequently a high value is set upon their labor. As we have already
seen, these female slaves usually serve at the same time as concubines,
if not legal wives of their masters.

(4) Another cause which we can perhaps hardly appreciate at the present
time is the high valuation set on children. We see this cause operating
particularly in the case of the patriarchs of the Old Testament. Under
the patriarchal family great value was set upon children as necessary to
continue the family line. Where the device of adoption was not resorted
to, therefore, in case of barrenness or the birth exclusively of female
children, nothing was more natural than that polygyny should be resorted
to in order to insure the family succession. In the patriarchal family
also a high valuation was necessarily set upon children, because the
larger the family grew the stronger it was.

(5) Finally, religion came to sanction polygyny. The religious sanction
of polygyny cannot be looked upon as one of its original causes, but
when once established it reacted powerfully to reenforce and maintain
the institution. How the religious sanction came about we can readily
see when we remember that very commonly religions confuse the practice
of the nobility with what is noble or commendable morally. The
polygynous practices of the nobility, therefore, under certain
conditions came to receive the sanction of religion. When this took
place polygyny became firmly established as a social institution, very
difficult to uproot, as all the experience of Christian missionaries
among peoples practicing polygyny goes to show. We may note also the
general truth, that while religion does not originate human institutions
or the forms of human association, it is preeminently that which gives
fixity and stability to institutions through the supernatural sanction
that it accords them.

Some judgment of the social value of polygyny may not be out of place in
connection with this subject. Admitting, as all students of social
history must, that in certain times and places the polygynous form of
family has been advantageous, has served the interests of social
survival and even of civilization, yet viewed from the standpoint of
present society it seems that our judgment of polygyny must be wholly
unfavorable. In the first place, as we have already seen, polygyny is
essentially an institution of barbarism. It arose largely through the
practice of wife capture and the keeping of female slaves. While often
adjusted to the requirements of barbarous societies, it seems in no way
adjusted to a high civilization. Polygyny, indeed, must necessarily rest
upon the subjection and degradation of women. Necessarily the practice
of polygyny must disregard the feelings of women, for women are jealous
creatures as well as men. No high regard for the feelings of women,
therefore, would be consistent with the practice of polygyny. Finally,
all the evidence that we have goes to show that under polygyny children
are neglected, and, at least from the standpoint of a high civilization,
inadequately socialized. This must necessarily be so, because in the
polygynous family the care of the children rests almost entirely with
the mother. While we have no statistics of infant mortality from
polygynous countries, it seems probable that infant mortality is high,
and we know from experience with polygynous families in our own state of
Utah, according to the testimony of those who have worked among them,
that delinquent children are especially found in such households.
Fatherhood, in the full sense of the word, can hardly be said to exist
under polygyny.

Those philosophers, like Schopenhauer, who advocate the legalizing of
polygyny in civilized countries, are hardly worth replying to. It is
safe to say that any widespread practice of polygyny in civilized
communities would lead to a reversion to the moral standards of
barbarism in many if not in all matters. That polygyny is still a
burning question in the United States of the twentieth century is merely
good evidence that we are not very far removed yet from barbarism.

MONOGAMY, as we have already seen, has been the prevalent form of
marriage in all ages and in all countries. Wherever other forms have
existed monogamy has existed alongside of them as the dominant, even
though perhaps not the socially honored, form. All other forms of the
family must be regarded as sporadic variations, on the whole unsuited to
long survival, because essentially inconsistent with the nature of human
society. In civilized Europe monogamy has been the only form of the
family sanctioned for ages by law, custom, and religion. The leading
peoples of the world, therefore, practice monogamy, and it is safe to
say that the connection between monogamy and progressive forms of
civilization is not an accident.

What, then, are the social advantages of monogamy which favor the
development of a higher type of culture? These advantages are numerous,
but perhaps the most important of them can be grouped under six heads.

(1) The number of the two sexes, as we have already seen, is everywhere
approximately equal. This means that monogamy is in harmony with the
biological conditions that exist in the human species. The equal number
of the two sexes has probably been brought about through natural
selection. Why nature should favor this proportion of the sexes can
perhaps be in part understood when we reflect that with such proportion
there can be the largest number of family groups, and hence the best
possible conditions for the rearing of offspring.

(2) Monogamy secures the superior care of children in at least two
respects. First, it very greatly decreases mortality in children,
because under monogamy both husband and wife unite in their care. Again,
monogamy secures the superior upbringing and, therefore, the superior
socialization of the child. In the monogamous family much greater
attention can be given to the training of children by both parents. In
other forms of the family not only is the death rate higher among
children, but from the point of view of modern civilization, at least,
they are inferiorly socialized.

(3) The monogamic family alone produces affections and emotions of the
higher type. It is only in the monogamic family that the highest type of
altruistic affection can be cultivated. It is difficult to understand,
for example, how anything like unselfish affection between husband and
wife can exist under polygyny. Under monogamy, husband and wife are
called upon to sacrifice selfish desires in the mutual care of children.
Monogamy is, therefore, fitted as a form of the family to foster
altruism in the highest degree, and, as we have seen, the higher the
type of altruism produced by the family life, the higher the type of the
social life generally, other things being equal. It is especially to the
credit of monogamy that it has created fatherhood in the fullest sense
of the term, and therefore taught the male element in human society the
value of service and self-sacrifice. Under polygynous conditions the
father cannot devote himself to any extent to his children or to any one
wife, since he is really the head of several households, and therefore,
as we have already noted, fatherhood in the fullest sense scarcely
exists under polygyny.

(4) Under monogamy, moreover, all family relationships are more definite
and strong, and thus family bonds, and ultimately social bonds, are
stronger. In the polygynous household the children of the different
wives are half brothers and half sisters, hence family affection has
little chance to develop among them, and as a matter of fact between
children of different wives there is constant pulling and hauling.
Moreover, because the children in a polygynous family are only half
brothers this immensely complicates relationships, and even the line of
ancestors. Legal relations and all blood relationships are, therefore,
more entangled. It is no inconsiderable social merit of monogamy that it
makes blood relationships simple and usually perfectly definite. All of
this has an effect upon society at large, because the cohesive power of
blood relationship, even in modern societies, is something still worth
taking into account. But of course the main influence of all this is to
be found in the family group itself, because it is only under such
simple and definite relations as we find in the monogamous family that
there is ample stimulus to develop the higher family affections.

(5) From all this it follows that monogamy favors the development of
high types of religion and morals, family affection being an
indispensable root of any high type of ethical religion. That form of
the family which favors the development of the highest type of this
affection will, therefore, favor the development of the highest type of
religion. We see this even more plainly, perhaps, in ancient times than
in the present time, because it was monogamy that favored the
development of ancestor worship through making the line of ancestors
clear and definite, and thus monogamy helped to develop this type of
religion, which became the basis of still higher types.

(6) Monogamy not only favors the preservation of the lives of the
children, but also favors the preservation of the lives of the parents,
because it is only under monogamy that we find aged parents cared for by
their children to any extent. Under polygyny the wife who has grown old
is discarded for a young wife, and usually ends her days in bitterness.
The father, too, under polygyny is rarely cared for by the children,
because the polygynous household has never given the opportunity for
close affections between parents and children. That monogamy, therefore,
helps to lengthen life through favoring care of parents by children in
old age is an element in its favor, for it adds not a little to the
happiness of life, and so to the strength of social bonds, that people
do not have to look forward to a cheerless and friendless old age.

In brief, the monogamic family presents such superior unity and harmony
from every point of view that it is much more fitted to produce a higher
type of culture. From whatever point of view we may look at it,
therefore, there are many reasons why civilized societies cannot afford
to sanction any other form of the family than that of monogamy.

The Relation of the Form of the Family to the Form of Industry.--As we
have already seen, the form of the family is undoubtedly greatly
influenced by the form of industry. This is so markedly the case that
some sociologists and economists have claimed that the form of the
family life is but a reflection of the form of the industrial life; that
the family in its changes and variations slavishly follows the changes
in economic conditions. That such an extreme view as this is a mistake
can readily be seen from a brief review of the causes which have
produced certain types of family life in certain periods. Thus, the
maternal type of the family cannot be said by any means to have been
determined by economic conditions. On the contrary, primarily the
maternal family, as we have seen, was determined by certain intellectual
conceptions, namely, the absence of knowledge of the physiological
connection between father and child, though the economic conditions of
primitive life tended powerfully to continue the maternal family long
after intellectual conditions had changed. Again, it has been said that
the patriarchal family owed its existence entirely to a form of
industry, namely, pastoral industry, but, as we have seen, other factors
also operated to produce the patriarchal type of the family, such as
war, religion, and perhaps man's inherent desire to dominate. Moreover,
religion continued the patriarchal family in many cases long after
pastoral industry had ceased to be the chief economic form.

So too with the forms of marriage. While polygyny has been claimed to be
due entirely to economic causes, we have seen that these so-called
economic causes have only been the opportunities for the polygynous
instincts of man to assert themselves. These polygynous instincts of man
have asserted themselves more or less under all conditions of society,
but under certain conditions, when there was an accumulation of wealth,
and especially with the institution of slavery, they had greater
opportunity to assert themselves than elsewhere. Thus the basic cause of
polygyny is not economic, but psychological; and given certain moral and
economic conditions of society, these polygynous tendencies assert
themselves. Monogamy, on the other hand, has in no sense been determined
by economic conditions but is fundamentally determined by the biological
fact of the numerical equality of the sexes. This is doubtless the main
reason why monogamy has been the prevalent form of the family
everywhere. Certain moral and psychological factors which go along with
the development of higher types of culture have, however, powerfully
reenforced monogamy. It is doubtful if economic conditions can to any
extent be shown to have equally reenforced the monogamic life.

Our conclusion must be, then, that while the form of the family and the
form of industry are closely related, so closely that the form of
industry continually affects more or less the family life, yet there is
no reason for concluding that the form of the family is wholly or even
chiefly determined by the form of industry.


SELECT REFERENCES


_For brief reading:_

WESTERMARCK, _History of Human Marriage_, Chaps. XX-XXII.


_For more extended reading:_

MCLENNAN, _The Patriarchal Theory._
MORGAN, _Ancient Society._
PARSONS, _The Family._
WAKE, _The Development of Marriage and Kinship._






CHAPTER VI


THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE FAMILY

While we cannot enter into the historical evolution of the family as an
institution among the different civilized peoples, still it will be
profitable for us to consider the history of the family among some
single representative people in order that we may see the forces which
have made and unmade the family life, and incidentally also to a great
degree, the general social life of that people. We shall select the
ancient Romans as the people among whom we can thus best study in
outline the development of the family. While the family life of the
ancient Hebrews is of particular interest to us because of the close
connection of our religion and ethics with that of the Hebrews, yet in
the family life of the ancient Romans constructive and destructive
factors are more clearly marked and, therefore, the study of ancient
Roman family life is best fitted to bring out those factors. The ancient
Romans were among the earliest civilized of the Aryan peoples, and their
institutions are, therefore, of peculiar interest to us as representing
approximately the early Aryan type. What we shall say concerning Roman
family life, moreover, will apply, with some modifications and
qualifications, to the family life of other Aryan peoples, especially
the Greeks. The Greeks and the Romans, indeed, were so closely related
in their early culture that for the purpose of institutional history
they may be considered practically one people. Without any attempt,
then, to sketch the history of the family as an institution in general,
let us note some of the salient features of the family life of the
ancient Romans.

The Early Roman Family.--(1) _Ancestor Worship as the Basis of the
Early Roman Family._ What we have said thus far indicates a close
connection between the family life and religion among all peoples. This
was especially true of the early Romans. It may be said, indeed, that
ancestor worship was the constitutive principle of their family life.
Among them the family seemed to have lost in part its character as a
purely social institution and to have become specialized into a
religious institution. At any rate, the early Roman family existed very
largely for the sake of perpetuating the worship of ancestors. Of
course, ancestor worship could have had nothing to do with the origin of
the family life among the Romans. The type of their family life was
patriarchal, and we have already noticed the causes which brought about
the existence of the patriarchal family. But while ancestor worship had
nothing to do with the origin of the family, once it was thoroughly
established it became the basis of the family life and transformed the
family as an institution.

The early Romans shared certain superstitions with many primitive
peoples, which, if not the basis of ancestor worship, powerfully
reinforced it. They believed, for example, that the soul continued in
existence after death, and that persons would be unhappy unless buried
in tombs with suitable offerings, and that if left unburied, or without
suitable offerings, the souls of these persons would return to torment
the living, Inasmuch as in the patriarchal family only sons could
perform religious rites, that is, could make offerings to the departed
spirits, these superstitions acted as a powerful stimulus to preserve
the family in order that offerings might continue to be made at the
graves of ancestors.

Thus, as we have already said, among the early Romans the family was
practically a religious institution with ancestor worship as its
constitutive principle. It is supposed by de Coulanges that in the
earliest times the dead ancestors were buried beneath the hearth. At any
rate, the hearth was the place where offerings were made to the departed
ancestors, and the flame on the hearth was believed to represent the
spirit of the departed. The house under such circumstances became a
temple and the whole atmosphere of the family life was necessarily a
religious one.

(2) _The Authority in the Early Roman Family_ was vested, as in all
patriarchal families, in the father or eldest living male of the family
group. Under ancestor worship he became the living representative of the
departed ancestors, the link between the living and the dead. Here we
may note that the family was not considered as constituted simply of its
living members, but that it included also all of its dead members.
Inasmuch as the dead were more numerous and were thought to be more
powerful than the living, they were by far the more important element in
the life of the family. The position of the house father, as
representative of the departed ancestors, and as the link between the
living and the dead, naturally made his authority almost divine. Hence,
the house father was himself, then, almost a deity, having absolute
power over all persons within the group, even to the extent of life and
death. This absolute power, which was known in the early Roman family as
the "patria potestas," could not, however, be exercised arbitrarily. The
house father, as representative of the departed ancestors, was
necessarily controlled by religious scruples and traditions. It was
impossible for him to act other than for what he believed to be the will
of the ancestors. Disobedience to him was, therefore, disobedience to
the divine ancestors, and hence was sacrilegious.

(3) _Relationship in the Early Roman Family_ was determined by
community of worship, inasmuch as only descendants upon the male side
could perform religious rites, and inasmuch as married women worshiped
the household gods of their husbands' ancestors; therefore, only
descendants on the male side could worship the same ancestors and were
relatives in the full religious and legal sense. These were known as
"agnates." Later, some relationship on the mother's side came to be
recognized, but relatives on the mother's side were known as a
"cognates," and for a long time property could not pass to them. Indeed,
in the earliest times the property of the family, as we have already
implied, was kept as a unit, held in trust by the eldest living member
of the family group for the good of all the family. In other words, the
house father in earliest times did not possess the right to make a will
but the property of the family passed intact from him to his eldest male
heir.

(4) _The Marriage Ceremony among the Early Romans_ was necessarily
of a religious character. It was constituted essentially of the
induction of the bride into the worship of her husband's ancestors. But
before this could be done the bride's father had first to free her from
the worship of her household gods, in later times a certificate of
manumission being given not unlike the manumission of the slave. After
the bride had been released from the worship of her father's ancestors,
the bridegroom and his friends brought her to his father's house, where
a ceremony of adoption was practically gone through with, adopting the
bride into the family of her husband. The essence of this ceremony, as
we have already said, was the induction of the bride into the worship of
her husband's ancestors through their both making an offering on the
family hearth and eating a sacrificial meal together. After that the
wife worshiped at her husband's altar and had no claim upon the
household gods of her father.

Under such circumstances it is not surprising that marriage was
practically indissoluble. A wife who was driven out of her husband's
household or deserted was without family gods of any sort, having no
claim upon those of her husband, and became, therefore, a social
outcast. Under such circumstances it is not surprising that divorce was
practically unknown. It is said, indeed, that for five hundred and
twenty years after Rome was founded there was not a single divorce in
Rome. While this may be an exaggeration, it is historically certain that
divorce was so rare in early Rome as to be practically unknown.

In case of a failure of sons to be born there was no taking of a second
wife, as among the Hebrews. Polygyny was unknown in early Rome. The
Roman device to prevent the failure of the family succession in such
cases was adoption. Younger sons of other families were adopted if no
sons were born, and these adopted sons, taking the family name, became
the same legally as sons by birth. Inasmuch as the position of younger
sons in the patriarchal household was not an enviable one there was
never lack of candidates for the position of eldest son in some family
group in which no sons had been born.

Not only was the early Roman family life the most stable that the world
has ever known, but it must also be considered to have been of a
relatively pure type. Chastity was rigidly enforced among the women, but
of course, as in all primitive peoples, was not enforced among the men.
Still it was expected that the married men at least should remain
relatively faithful to their wives. On the whole, therefore, the early
Roman family life must be judged to have been of a singularly high and
stable type. While the position of women and children in the early Roman
family was one of subjection, the family itself was nevertheless of a
high type. But it was inevitable that it should decay, and this decay
began comparatively early. Inasmuch as the early Roman family was based
upon ancestor worship, a religion which was fitted for relatively small
isolated groups, it was inevitable that the family life should decay
with this ancestor worship. How early the decay of ancestor worship
began it is impossible to say. Perhaps the nature gods, Jupiter, Venus,
and the rest, existed alongside of ancestor worship from the earliest
times. At any rate, we find their worship growing rapidly within the
period of authentic history and undermining the domestic worship, while
at a still later period skeptical philosophy undermined both religions.
Along with the decay of ancestor worship went many economic and
political changes which marked the dissolution of the patriarchal
family. Let us see what some of the steps in this decadence were.

(5) _The Decadence,_ (a) One of the earliest steps toward the
breaking down of the patriarchal family which we find is the limiting of
the power of the house father. This took place very early--as soon as
the Council of Elders, or Senate, was formed to look after matters of
collective interest. Gradually the paternal power diminished, until it
was confined to matters concerning the family group proper.

(b) A second step was when the right to make a will was conceded. This
right, as we have seen, did not exist in the earliest Roman times, but
with the development of property and of a more complex economic life the
house father was given the right to divide his property among his
children, at first only on the male side, but later among any of his
children, and still later to bequeath it to whom he pleased.

(c) Thus women came to be given the right to hold property, a thing
which was unknown in the earliest times; and becoming property holders,
their other rights in many respects began to increase. Originally the
wife had no right to divorce her husband, but in the second century B.C.
women also gained the right of divorcing their husbands.

(d) The rights of children were increased along with the rights of
women, particularly of younger children.

(e) The right of plebeians to intermarry with the noble families became
recognized. All of these changes we should perhaps regard as good in
themselves, but they nevertheless marked the disintegration of the
patriarchal family. The decay of the family life did not stop with these
changes, however, but went on to the decay of the family bonds
themselves.

Later Roman Family Life.--By the beginning of the Christian era the
relations between the sexes had become very loose. Men not only
frequently divorced their wives, but women frequently divorced their
husbands. Indeed, a complete revolution passed over the Roman family.
Marriage became a private contract, whereas, as we have seen, in the
beginning it was a religious bond. Many loose forms of marriage were
developed, which amounted practically to temporary marriages. In all
cases it was easy for a husband or wife to divorce each other for very
trivial causes. Among certain classes of Roman society the instability
of the family became so great that we find Seneca saying that there were
women who reckoned their years by their husbands, and Juvenal recording
one woman as having eight husbands in five years.

Women and children achieved their practical emancipation, as we would
say. Women, especially, were free to do as they saw fit. Marriages were
formed and dissolved at pleasure among certain classes, and among all
classes the instability of the family life had become very great.

Along with all this, of course, went a growth of vice. It is not too
much to say that the Romans of the first and second centuries A.D.
approached as closely to a condition of promiscuity as any civilized
people of which we have knowledge.

_Causes of the Decadence_. When we examine the causes of this great
revolution in Roman family life from the austere morals and stable
family of the early Romans to the laxity and promiscuity of the later
Romans, we find that these causes can perhaps be grouped under four or
five principal heads, (1) First among all the causes we must put the
destruction of the domestic religion, namely, ancestor worship, through
the growth of nature worship and skeptical philosophy. The destruction
of the domestic religion necessarily shattered the foundations of the
Roman family, since, as we have already seen, there was the closest
connection between the family life of the early Romans and ancestor
worship. But it is not probable that ancestor worship was destroyed
merely through the growth of nature worship and of skeptical philosophy.
As we have already seen, it was a religion which was mainly adapted to
isolated groups. Changes in economic and political conditions,
therefore, were to some extent prior to the decay of the domestic
religion.

(2) Changes in economic conditions, that is, in the form of industry,
were, then, among the more important causes of the decay of the early
Roman family. The patriarchal family, as we have already seen, belonged
essentially to the pastoral stage of industry, and as soon as settled
agricultural life, commerce, and manufacturing industry developed, this
destroyed the isolated patriarchal groups, and so also in time affected
even the religion which was their basis. Again, the increase of
population going along with the changes in the methods in obtaining a
living destroyed the old conditions under which the family had been the
political unit.

(3) We have therefore as a third cause the breaking up of old political
conditions. Family groups were welded into small cities and the
authority of the patriarch was destroyed. Legislation designed to meet
the new social conditions often profoundly affected the whole family
group, and weakened family bonds.

(4) The growth of divorce and of vice may be put down as a fourth cause
of the decay of the Roman family. Some may say that this was an effect
of the decay of the Roman family rather than a cause, but it was also a
cause as well as an effect, for it is a peculiarity of social life that
what is at one stage an effect reacts to become a cause at a later
stage; and this was certainly the case with the growth of divorce and
vice in Rome, in its effect upon the Roman family. Moreover, much of
this came from Greece through imitation. The family life had decayed in
Greece much earlier than it had in Rome, and when Rome conquered Greece
it annexed its vices also. While the most radical social changes do not
usually come about merely through imitation, yet the imitation of a
foreign people is frequently, in the history of a particular nation, one
of the most potent causes in bringing about social changes. It was
certainly so in the case of the growth of divorce and vice in Rome.

To sum up and to generalize: we may say that the causes of the decay of
the Roman family life were very complex, and that this is true of nearly
all important social changes. It is impossible to reduce the causes of
these changes to any single principle or set of causes. While we have
seen that changes in economic conditions were undoubtedly very
influential in bringing about the profound changes in the Roman family,
still we have no ground for regarding the economic changes as
determinative of all the rest. We know as yet little of the development
of industry in antiquity. What little we do know, however, furnishes
good ground for claiming that changes in the methods of getting a living
are among the most influential causes of social change in general; but
there is nothing which warrants the sweeping generalization of Karl Marx
and his followers, "that the method of the production of the material
life determines the social, political, and spiritual life process in
general." On the contrary, the evolution of the Roman family clearly
shows moral and psychological factors at work quite independent of
economic causes. The decay of ancestor worship, for example, cannot be
wholly attributed to the change in the method of getting a living. The
very growth of population and accompanying changes in political
conditions probably had quite as much to do with the undermining of
ancestor worship. Moreover, while religion may not be an original
determining cause of social forms, it is, nevertheless, as we have
already seen, especially that which gives them stability and permanency,
so much so that the life history of a culture is frequently the life
history of a religion. The decay of religious ideas and beliefs,
therefore, from any cause, frequently proves the important element
working for social change in all societies. So, too, changes in
political conditions, especially changes in law through new legislation,
frequently prove a profound modifying influence in societies. Lastly,
there are certain moral causes inherent in the individual, oftentimes
involving perverted expressions of instinct, which lead to profound
social changes. Such was the vice which Rome copied very largely from
Greece, but which proved the final solvent in its family life.

In general we may say, then, that there is no single principle which
will explain the evolution of the family from the earliest times down to
the present. Any attempt to reduce the evolution of the family to a
single principle, or to show that it has been controlled by a single set
of causes, must inevitably end in failure. The economic determinism of
Marx and his followers, the ideological conceptions of Hegel, the
geographical influences of Buckle and his school, and like explanations,
are all found wanting when they are applied to the actual history of the
family. It is not different with the theories of recent sociologists,
who would strive to explain all social changes through a single
principle. Professor Giddings' principle of "Consciousness of Kind" and
Tarde's principle of "Imitation" will not go further in explaining the
changes in the family life than some of the older principles that we
have just mentioned. Human life is, indeed, too complex to be explained
in terms of any single principle or any single set of causes. The family
in particular is an organic structure which responds first to one set of
stimuli and then to another. Now it is modified by economic conditions,
now by religious ideas, now by legislation, now by imitation, and so on
through the whole set of possible stimuli which may impinge upon and
modify the activity of a living organism. So it is with all
institutions.

The Influence of Christianity upon the Family.--While we cannot study
further the evolution of the family in any detail, still it is
necessary, in order to avoid too great discontinuity, to notice in a few
sentences the influence of Christianity upon the family in Western
civilization.

Early Christianity, as we have already seen, found the family life of
the Greco-Roman world demoralized. The reconstruction of the family
became, therefore, one of the first tasks of the new religion, and while
other circumstances may have aided the church in this work, still on the
whole it was mainly the influence of the early church that reconstituted
the family life. From the first the church worked to abolish divorce,
and fought as evil such vices as concubinage and prostitution, that came
to flourish to such an extent in the Pagan world. Only very slowly did
the early leaders of the church win the mass of the people to accepting
their views as to the permanency of the marriage bond. In order to aid
in making this bond more stable the early church recognized marriage as
one of the sacraments, and, as implied, steadily opposed the idea of the
later Roman Law that marriage was simply a private contract. The result
was, eventually, that marriage came to be regarded again as a religious
bond, and the family life took on once more the aspect of great
stability. After the church had come fully into power in the Western
world, legal divorce ceased to be recognized and legal separation was
substituted in its stead. Thus the church succeeded in reconstituting
the family life upon a stable basis, but the family after being
reconstituted, was of a semipatriarchal type. Nothing was more natural
than this, for the church had no model to go by except the paternal
family of the Hebrew and Greek and Roman civilization. Nevertheless, the
place of women and children in this semipatriarchal religious family
established by the church was higher on the whole than in the ancient
patriarchal family. The church put an end to the exposure of children,
which had been common in Rome, and protected childhood in many ways. It
also exalted the place of woman in the family, though leaving her
subject to her husband. The veneration of the Virgin tended particularly
to give women an honored place socially and religiously. Only by the
advocacy and practice of ascetic doctrines may the early church be said
to have detracted from the social valuation of the family. On the whole
the reconstituting of the family by the church must be regarded as its
most striking social work. But the thing for us to note particularly is
that the type of the family life created by the church was what we might
call a semipatriarchal type, in which the importance of husband and
father was very much out of proportion to all the rest of the members of
the family group. It was this semipatriarchal family which persisted
down to the nineteenth century.


SELECT REFERENCES


_For brief reading:_

DE COULANGES, _The Ancient City_, Chaps. I-X.
LECKY, _History of European Morals_, Chap. V.
SCHMIDT, _Social Results of Early Christianity_, Chap. II.


_For more extended reading:_

HEARN, _The Aryan Household._
HOWARD, _History of Matrimonial Institutions._
GROTE, _History of Greece._
MOMMSEN, _The History of Rome._


_On the early Hebrew family:_

MCCURDY, _History, Prophecy, and the Monuments_, Vol. II.
ROBERTSON SMITH, _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_.


_On the early German family:_

GUMMERE, _Germanic Origins._






CHAPTER VII


THE PROBLEM OF THE MODERN FAMILY

Passing over the changes which affected the family during the Middle
Ages and the still more striking changes which came through the
Reformation, we must now devote ourselves to the study of the problems
of the family as it exists at present. The religious theory of the
family which prevailed during the Middle Ages, but which was more or
less undermined by the Reformation, gave away entirely in those great
social changes which ushered in the nineteenth century. Again, the view
that marriage was a private contract came to prevail among the mass of
the people, and even to be embodied in a great many of the constitutions
and laws of the nineteenth century. At the same time profound economic
changes tended largely to individualize society, and these were
reflected in the democratic movement toward forms of popular government,
which have tended on the whole to make the individual the political
unit. The nineteenth century was, then, in all respects a period of
great social change and unrest. Moreover, the growth of wealth has
favored, in certain classes at least, lower moral standards and
increasing laxity in family relationships. Thus it happens that we find
the family life at the beginning of the twentieth century in a more
unstable condition than it has been at any time since the beginning of
the Christian era. The instability of the modern family is, indeed, so
great that many have thought that the family, as an institution, in its
present form at least, of permanent monogamy, will pass away. There can
be no doubt, at any rate, that the whole problem of the modern family
centers in the matter of its instability, that is, in divorce. The study
of the divorce movement, then, will throw more light upon the condition
of the modern family than the study of anything else. The instability of
the modern family has been most evident in the United States. Hence, it
is particularly American conditions that will concern us, although
undoubtedly the disintegration of the family is not a peculiarly
American phenomenon; rather it has characterized more or less all modern
civilization, but is especially in evidence in America because American
society has exaggerated the industrialism and individualism which are
characteristic of Western civilization in general.

Without devoting too much time to the consideration of divorce
statistics in their technical aspects, let us note, then, some of the
main outlines of the modern divorce movement in this and other civilized
countries.

Statistics of Divorce in the United States and Other Civilized
Countries.--For a long time the United States has led the world in the
number of its divorces. Already in 1885 this country had more divorces
than all the rest of the Christian civilized world put together. These
statistics of the number of divorces granted in different civilized
countries in 1885 (taken from Professor W. F. Willcox's monograph on
_The Divorce Problem_) are of sufficient interest to cite at
length:


United States...................... 23,472
France.............................  6,245
Germany............................  6,161
Russia.............................  1,789
Austria............................  1,718
Switzerland........................    920
Denmark............................    635
Italy..............................    556
Great Britain and Ireland..........    508
Roumania...........................    541
Holland............................    339
Belgium............................    290
Sweden.............................    229
Australia..........................    100
Norway.............................     68
Canada.............................     12


It will be noted that in this particular year (1885), when the United
States had 23,472 divorces, all the other countries mentioned together
had only 20,131. For 1905, twenty years later, the following statistics
are available:


United States...................... 67,976
Germany............................ 11,147
France............................. 10,860
Austria-Hungary....................  5,785
Switzerland........................  1,206
Belgium............................    901
Holland............................    900
Italy (1904).......................    859
Great Britain and Ireland..........    821
Denmark............................    549
Sweden.............................    448
Norway.............................    408
Australia..........................    339
New Zealand........................    126
Canada.............................     33


It is evident from the above figures that the United States has more
than kept its lead over the rest of the world in this matter of
dissolving family ties, for it would seem probable from these figures
that in 1905, when the United States had nearly 68,000 divorces, all the
rest of the Christian civilized world put together had less than 40,000.
Moreover, the divorce rates of the different countries tell the same
story. In 1905 in France, there was only one divorce to every thirty
marriages; in Germany, but one to every forty-four marriages; in
England, but one to every four hundred marriages. Even in Switzerland,
which has the highest divorce rate of any country of Europe, there was
only one divorce in 1905 to every twenty-two marriages. Let us compare
these rates with that of the United States, and particularly with the
rates of several of the states that lead in the matter of divorces. In
1905 there was in the United States about one divorce to every twelve
marriages, but the State of Washington had one divorce to every four
marriages; Montana, one divorce to every five marriages; Colorado,
Texas, Arkansas, and Indiana all had one divorce to every six marriages;
California and Maine had one divorce to every seven marriages; New
Hampshire, Missouri, and Kansas, one divorce to every eight marriages.
While these rates are those of the states in which divorces are most
numerous, yet, nevertheless, the number of states in which the divorce
rates range from one to every six marriages to one to ten marriages are
so numerous that they may be said to be fairly representative of
American conditions generally. Some cities and localities have, of
course, even higher divorce rates than any of the states that have been
named. According to the United States Census Bulletin No. 20, there was
in 1903 one divorce in Kansas City, Missouri, to every four marriages,
and one divorce in the city of San Francisco to every three marriages.

_Increase of Divorces in the United States._ Not only does the
United States lead the world in the number of its divorces, but
apparently divorces are increasing in this country much more rapidly
than the population. In 1867, the first year for which statistics for
the country as a whole were gathered, there were 9937 divorces in the
United States, but by 1906, the last year for which we have statistics,
the total number of divorces granted in this country, yearly, had
reached 72,062. Again, from 1867 to 1886 there were 328,716 divorces
granted in the United States, but during the next twenty years, from
1887 to 1906, the number reached 945,625, or almost a total of 1,000,000
divorces granted in twenty years. Again, from 1867 to 1886 the number of
divorces increased 157 per cent, while the population increased only
about 60 per cent; from 1887 to 1906 the number of divorces increased
over 160 per cent, while the population increased only slightly over 50
per cent. Thus it is evident that divorces are increasing in the United
States three times as fast as the increase of population. It becomes,
therefore, a matter of some curious interest to speculate upon what will
be the end of this movement. If divorces should continue to increase as
they have during the past forty years, it is evident that it would not
be long before all marriages would be terminated by divorce instead of
by death. In 1870, 3.5 per cent of all marriages were terminated by
divorce; in 1880, 4.8 per cent were terminated by divorce, and in 1900,
about 8 per cent. Professor Willcox has estimated that if this
increasing divorce rate continues, by 1950 one fourth of all marriages
in the United States will be terminated by divorce, and in 1990 one half
of all marriages. Thus we are apparently within measurable distance of a
time when, if present tendencies continue, the family, as a permanent
union between husband and wife, lasting until death, shall cease to be.
At least, it is safe to say that in a population where one half of all
marriages will be terminated by divorce the social conditions would be
no better than those in the Rome of the decadence. We cannot imagine
such a state of affairs without the existence alongside of it of
widespread promiscuity, neglect of childhood, and general social
demoralization. Without, however, stopping at this point to discuss the
results or the effects of the divorce movement upon society, let us now
consider for a moment how these divorces are distributed among the
various elements and classes of our population.

_Distribution of Divorces._ It is usually thought by those who have
observed the matter most carefully that divorce especially characterizes
the wealthy classes and the laboring classes, but is least common among
the middle classes. We have no statistics to bear out this belief, but
it seems probable that it is substantially correct. The divorce
statistics which we have, however, indicate certain striking differences
in the distribution of divorces by classes and communities.

(1) The divorce rate is higher in the cities than in their surrounding
country districts. We have just noted, for example, that the divorce
rate in Kansas City, Missouri, is one divorce to every four marriages,
while in the state as a whole it is one to every eight marriages. There
are, however, certain exceptions to this generalization.

(2) A curious fact that the census statistics show is that apparently
the divorce rate is about four times as high among childless couples as
among couples that have children. This doubtless does not mean that
domestic unhappiness is four times more common in families where there
are no children than in families that have children, but it does show,
nevertheless, that the parental instinct, is now, as in primitive times,
a powerful force to bind husband and wife together.

(3) While we have no statistics from this country telling us exactly
what the distribution of divorces is among the various religious
denominations, still we know that because the Roman Catholic Church is
strongly against divorce, divorces are very rare in that denomination.
In Switzerland, where the number of divorces among Protestants and
Catholics has been noted, it is found that divorces are four times as
common among Protestants as among Catholics. Some observers in this
country have claimed that divorces are most common among those of no
religious profession, next most common among Protestants, next among
Jews, and least common among Roman Catholics.

(4) From this we might expect, as our statistics indicate, that the
divorce rate is much higher among the native whites in this country than
it is among the foreign born, for many of the foreign born are Roman
Catholics, and, in any case, they come from countries where divorce is
less common than in the United States.

(5) For the last forty years two thirds of all divorces have been
granted on demand of the wife. This may indicate, on the one hand, that
the increase of divorces is a movement connected with the emancipation
of woman, and on the other hand it may indicate that it is the husband
who usually gives the ground for divorce.

(6) The census statistics show three great centers of divorce in the
United States. One is the New England States, one the states of the
Central West, and one the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast states. These
three centers are also typical centers of American institutions and
ideas. The individualism of the New England, the Central West, and the
Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast regions has always been marked in
comparison with some other sections of the country. But during the last
twenty years divorce has also been increasing rapidly in the Southern
states, and we now find such states as Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma
well up toward the front among the states with a high divorce rate.

This distribution of divorces among the various elements and classes of
the country suggests something as to the causes of divorce, and this
will come out fully later in a discussion of the causes of the increase
of divorce.

The Grounds for Granting Divorce.--There are no less than thirty-six
distinct grounds for absolute divorce recognized by the laws of the
several states, ranging from only one ground recognized in New York to
fourteen grounds recognized in New Hampshire. For this reason some have
supposed that many of the divorces in this country are granted on
comparatively trivial grounds. Several states have, for example, what is
known as an "Omnibus Clause," granting divorce for mere incompatibility
and the like. But the examination of divorce statistics shows that very
few divorces are granted on trivial grounds. On the contrary, most
divorces seem to be granted for grave reasons, such as adultery,
desertion, cruelty, imprisonment for crime, habitual drunkenness, and
neglect on the part of the husband to provide for his family. These are
usually recognized as grave reasons for the dissolution of the marriage
tie. None of them at least could be said to be trivial. Professor
Willcox showed that for the twenty year period, 1867 to 1886, over
ninety-seven per cent of all divorces were granted for these six
principal causes. Moreover, he also showed that over sixty per cent were
granted for the two most serious causes of all,--adultery and desertion.
Again, of the one million divorces granted from 1887 to 1906 over
ninety-four per cent were granted for the six principal causes and over
fifty-five per cent for adultery and desertion, while in still other
cases adultery and desertion figured in combination with other causes (a
total of over sixty-two per cent in all). Therefore, it seems probable
that in nearly two thirds of the cases the marriage bond had already
practically been dissolved before the courts stepped in to make the
dissolution formal. We must conclude, therefore, that divorce is
prevalent not because of the laxity of our laws, but rather because of
the decay of our family life; that divorce is but a symptom of the
disintegration of the modern family, particularly the American family.

In other words, divorce is but a symptom of more serious evils, and
these evils have in certain classes of American society apparently
undermined the very virtues upon which the family life subsists. This is
not saying that vice is more prevalent to-day than it was fifty years
ago. We have no means of knowing whether it is or not, and there may
well be a difference of opinion upon such a subject. It is the opinion
of some eminent authorities that there has been no growth of vice in the
United States along with the growth of divorce, but this would seem to
be doubtful. The very causes for which divorce is granted suggest a
demoralization of certain classes. While there may not have been,
therefore, any general growth of vice in the United States along with
the growth of divorce, it is conceivable that it may have increased
greatly in certain classes of American society. Be this as it may, it is
not necessary to assume that there has been any growth of vice in the
American population, for if actual moral practices are no higher than
they were fifty years ago that alone would be a sufficient reason to
explain considerable disintegration of our family life. It is an
important truth in sociology that the morality which suffices for a
relatively simple social life, largely rural, such as existed in this
country fifty years ago, is not sufficient for a more complex society
which is largely urban, such as exists at the present time. Moreover,
recognized moral standards within the past fifty years have largely been
raised through the growth of general intelligence. It follows that
immoral acts, which were condoned fifty years ago and which produced but
slight social effect, to-day meet with great reprobation and have far
greater social consequences than a generation ago. This is particularly
true of the standards which the wife imposes upon the husband. For
centuries, as we have already seen, the husband has secured divorce for
adultery of the wife, but for centuries no divorce was given to the wife
for the adultery of the husband; and this is even true to-day in modern
England, unless the adultery of the husband be accompanied by other
flagrant violations of morality. Conduct on the part of the husband,
which the wife overlooked, therefore, a generation ago, is to-day
sufficient to disrupt the family bonds and become a ground for the
granting of a divorce. Even if vice, then, has not increased in our
population, if moral practices are no higher to-day than fifty years
ago, we should expect that this alone would have far different
consequences now than then. The growth of intelligence and of higher and
more complex forms of social organization necessitates realization of
higher standards of conduct if the institutions of society are to retain
their stability.

But there are grave reasons for believing that there has been in certain
classes of society a decay of the very virtues upon which the family
rests, for the family life requires not only chastity, but even more the
virtues of self-sacrifice, loyalty, obedience, and self-subordination.
Now there is abundant evidence to show that these particular virtues
which belong to a self-subordinating life are those which have suffered
most in the changes and new adjustments of modern society. We have
replaced these virtues largely by those of self-interest,
self-direction, and self-assertiveness.

Causes of the Increase of Divorce in the United States.--Let us note
somewhat more in detail the causes of the increased instability of the
American family during the past four or five decades. We have already in
a rough way indicated some of these causes in studying the distribution
of divorce and the grounds upon which it is granted. But the causes of
the instability of the family so affect our whole social life and all of
our institutions that they are well worth somewhat more detailed study.

(1) As the first of these causes of the increase of divorce in the
United States we should put the decay of religion, particularly of the
religious theory of marriage and the family. As we have already seen, no
stable family life has existed anywhere in history without a religious
basis, but within the last few decades religious sentiments, beliefs,
and ideals have become largely dissociated from marriage and the family,
and the result is that many people regard the institutions of marriage
and the family as a matter of personal convenience. This decay of the
religious view of the marriage bond has, however, had other antecedent
causes, partially in the moral and intellectual spirit of our
civilization, partially in our industrial conditions.

(2) We should put, therefore, as a second cause of the increase of
divorces in this country the growing spirit of individualism. By
individualism we mean here the spirit of self-assertion and
self-interest, the spirit which leads a man to find his law in his own
wishes, or even in his whims and caprices. Now, this growing spirit of
individualism is undoubtedly more destructive of the social life than
anything else. It makes unstable all institutions, and especially the
family, because the family must rest upon very opposite characteristics.
 Our democratic government, the development of our industry, and our
education have all been responsible to some extent for making the
individual take his own interests and wishes as his law.

(3) Moreover, this individualism has spread within the last fifty years
especially among the women of the population, and a great movement has
sprung up which is known as the "Woman's Rights Movement," or simply the
"Woman's Movement." Now this woman's movement has accompanied and in
part effected the emancipation of women legally, mentally, and
economically. The result is that women, as a class, have become as much
individualized as the men, and oftentimes are as great practical
individualists.

No one would claim that the emancipation of woman, in the sense of
freeing her from those things which have prevented the highest and best
development of her personality, is not desirable. But this emancipation
of woman has brought with it certain opportunities for going down as
well as for going up. Woman's emancipation has not, in other words,
meant to all classes of women, woman's elevation. On the contrary, it
has been to some, if not an opportunity for license, at least an
opportunity for self-asserti

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