266 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



communities, which are dissolving under the stress of industrial com- 

 petition, says, " The truth is, that the incentives to labor and economy 

 are weakened by the sense of personal interest in their results being 

 subdivided." 



And now let us note the marvelous parallel between this change 

 in the structure of the social organism and a change in the structui-e 

 of the individual organism. We saw that definite nucleated cells are 

 the components which, by aggregation, lay the foundations of the 

 higher organisms ; in the same way that the well-developed simple 

 social groups are those out of which, by composition, the higher 

 societies are eventually evolved. Here let me add that as, in the 

 higher individual organisms, the aggregated cells which form the 

 embryo, and for some time retain their separateness, gradually give 

 place to structures in which the cell-form is greatly masked and 

 almost lost, so in the social organism the family groups and com- 

 pound family groups, which were the original components eventually 

 lose their distinguishableness, and there arise structures formed of 

 mingled individuals belonging to many different stocks. 



A question of great interest, which has immediate bearings on 

 policy, remains : " Is there any limit to this disintegration of the 

 family ? " 



Already in the more advanced nations, that process which dis- 

 solved the larger family aggregates, dissipating the tribe and the 

 gens and leaving only the family proper, has long been completed ; 

 and ah-eady there have taken place partial disintegrations of the family 

 proper. Along with changes which for family responsibility substi- 

 tuted individual responsibility in respect of offenses, have gone changes 

 which, in some degree, have absolved the family from responsibility 

 for its members in other respects. When by poor-laws public provision 

 was made for children whom their parents did not or could not ade- 

 quately support, society in so far assumed family functions ; as also 

 when undertaking, in a .measure, the charge of parents not supported 

 by their children. Legislation has of late further relaxed family bonds 

 by relieving parents from the care of their children's minds, and in 

 place of education under parental direction establishing education 

 tinder state direction ; and where the appointed authorities have found 

 it needful partially to clothe neglected children before they could be 

 taught, and even to whip children by police agency for not going to 

 school,' they have still further substituted for the responsibility of 

 parents a national reponsibility. This recognition of the individual, 

 even when a child, as the social unit, rather than the family, has indeed 

 now gone so far that by many the paternal duty of the state is as- 

 sumed as self-evident ; and criminals are called " our failures." 



Are these disintegrations of the family parts of a normal prog- 



> See Times, February 28, 187V. 



