ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE FAMILY. 263 



An instructive analogy between social organisms and individual 

 organisms supports this inference. In a passage from which I have 

 already quoted a clause, Sir Henry Maine, using a metaphor which 

 biology furnishes, says : " All the branches of human society may or 

 may not have been developed from joint families which arose out of 

 an original patriarchal cell ; but, wherever the joint family is an in- 

 stitution of an Ayran race, we see it springing from such a cell, and, 

 when it dissolves, we see it dissolving into a number of such cells : " 

 thus implying that, as the cell is the proximate component of the in- 

 dividual organism, so the family is the proximate component of the 

 social organism. But in either case this, though generally true, is not 

 entirely true ; and the qualification required is extremely suggestive. 

 Low down in the animal kingdom exist ci-eatures not possessing the 

 definite cell-structure small portions of living protoplasm without 

 limiting membranes, and even without nuclei. There are also certain 

 types produced by aggregation of such Protozoa ; and, though it is 

 now alleged that the individual components of one of these compound 

 Foramlnifera have nuclei, yet they have none of the defiuiteness of 

 developed cells. In types above these, however, it is otherwise : 

 every coelentei'ate, molluscous, annidose, or vertebrate animal begins 

 as a cluster of distinct, nucleated cells. Whence it would seem that 

 the unorganized portion of protoplasm constituting the lowest animal 

 cannot, by union with others such, furnish the basis for a higher ani- 

 mal ; and that the simplest aggregates have to become definitely de- 

 veloped before they can form larger aggregates capable of much de- 

 velopment. Similarly with societies. The tribes in which the family 

 is vague and unsettled remain politically unorganized. Sundry jjar- 

 tially-civilized peoples characterized by some defiuiteness and co- 

 herence of family structure have attained corresponding heigJits of 

 social structure. And the highest organizations have been reached 

 by nations compounded out of family groups which had previously 

 become highly organized. 



And now, limiting our attention to these highest societies, we 

 have to thank Sir Henry Maine for showing us the ways in which 

 many of their ideas, customs, laws, and arrangements, have been de- 

 lived from those which characterized the patriarchal group. 



In all cases, habits of life, when continued for many generations, 

 mould the nature ; and the resulting traditional beliefs and usages, 

 with the accompanying sentiments, become difiicult to change. 

 Hence, on passing from the wandering pastoral life to the settled 

 agricultural life, the patriarchal type of family, with its established 

 traits, persisted, and gave its stamp to the social structures which 

 gradually arose. As Sir Henry Maine says : " All the larger groups 

 which make up the primitive societies in which the patriarchal family 

 occurs, are seen to be multiplications of it, and to be, in fact, them- 



