MAN 217 



The result of this is man's family life, as Mr. John 

 Fiske has shown so beautifully in that fascinating mon- 

 ograph, " The Destiny of Man." And family life once 

 introduced becomes the foundation and bulwark of all 

 civilization, morality, and religion. Far down in the 

 mammalian series, before the development of the fam- 

 ily, maternal education has become prominent, and the 

 young begins life, benefited by the experiences of the 

 parent. How much more efficient is this in family life. 

 But, furthermore, the family is perhaps the first, cer- 

 tainly the most important, of those higher unities in 

 which men are bound together. Social life of a sort 

 undoubtedly existed, before man, among birds, insects, 

 and lower mammals. The community was often de- 

 fective or incomplete in unity, or existed under such 

 limitations that it could not show its best results, but 

 that it was of vast benefit from an even higher than 

 mere physical standpoint, no one will, I think, deny. 

 But with the family a new era of education and social 

 life began. 



First of all, the struggle for existence is thereby 

 greatly modified and mitigated. This crowding out 

 and trampling down of the weaker by the stronger is 

 transferred, to a certain extent, from the individual to 

 the family and, in great degree, from the family to 

 larger and larger social units. For within the limits of 

 the family competition tends to be replaced by mut- 

 ual helpfulness, and not only are the loneliness and 

 horror of the struggle between isolated individuals ban- 

 ished, but, what is vastly more, the family becomes the 

 school of unselfishness and love. And what has thus 

 become true of the single family, and groups of nearly 

 related families, is slowly being realized in the larger 



