264 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



selves more or less formed on its model." The divisions whicli grow 

 up as the family multiplies become distinct in various degrees. "In 

 the joint undivided family of the Hindoos, the stripes, or stocks, 

 which are only known to European law as branches of inheritors, are 

 actual divisions of the family, and live together in distinct parts of 

 the common dwelling;" and similarly in some parts of Europe. In 

 the words of another writer: " The Bulgarians, like the Russian peas- 

 antry, adhere to the old patriarchal method, and fathers and married . 

 sons, with their children and children's children, live under the same 

 roof until the grandfather dies. As each son in his turn gets married, 

 a new room is added to the old building, until with the new genera- 

 tion there will often be twenty or thirty people living under the same 

 roof, all paying obedience and respect to the head of the family." 

 From further multiplication results the village community ; in which 

 the households, and in part the landed properties, have become dis- 

 tinct. And then, where larger populations arise, and different stocks 

 are locally mingled, there are formed such groups within groups as 

 those constituting, among the Romans, the family, the house, and the 

 tribe : common ancestry being in all cases the bond. 



Along with persistence of patriarchal structures under new con- 

 ditions naturally goes persistence of patriarchal princiisles. There is 

 sujDreraacy of the eldest male ; sometimes continuing, as in Roman 

 law, to the extent of life-and -death power over wife and children. 

 There long survives, too, the general idea that the offenses of the in- 

 dividual are the offenses of the group to which he belongs ; and, as a 

 consequence, there survives the practice of holding the group respon- 

 sible and inflicting punishment upon it. There come the system of 

 agnatic kinship, and the resulting laws of inheritance. And there 

 develops the ancestor-worship in which there join groups of family, 

 house, tribe, etc., that are large in proportion as the ancestor is 

 remote. These results, however, here briefly indicated, do not now 

 concern us ; they have to be treated of more as social than as domes- 

 tic phenomena. 



But with one further general truth which Sir Henry Maine brings 

 into view, we are concerned the disintegration of the family. " The 

 unit of an ancient society was the family," he says, and " of a mod- 

 ern society the individual." Now, excluding those archaic types of 

 society in which, as we have seen, the family is undeveloped, this 

 generalization appears to be amply supported by facts ; and it is one 

 of profound importance. If, recalling the above suggestions respect- 

 ing the genesis of the patriarchal family, we ask what must happen 

 when the causes which joined in forming it are removed, and replaced 

 by antagonistic causes, we shall understand why this change has 

 taken place. In the lowest groups, while there continues cooperation 

 in war and the chase among individuals belonging to different stocks, 

 the family remains vague and incoherent, and the individual is the 



