262 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



this in the statement of Gomara respecting the Peruvians that " neph- 

 ews inherit, and not sons, except in the case of the Incas." Still 

 better are we shown it by sundry African states. Among the coast 

 negroes, whose kinships are ordinarily through females, whose various 

 societies ai-e variously governed and most of them very unstable, male 

 descent has been established in some of the kingdoms. The inland 

 negroes, too, similarly retaining as a rule descent in the female line, 

 alike in the state and in the family, have acquired in their public and 

 private arrangements some traits akin to those derived from the patri- 

 archal system ; and the like is the case in Congo. Further, in the 

 powerful kingdom of Dahomey, where the monarchy has become 

 stable and absolute, male succession and jDrimogeniture are completely 

 established, and in the less desjjotically governed Ashantee partially 

 established. 



But whether the patriarchal type of family may or may not arise 

 under other conditions, Ave may safely say that the pastoral life is most 

 favorable to development of it. From the general laws of evolution 

 it is a corollary that there goes on integration of any group of like 

 units simultaneously exposed to forces that are like in kind, amount, 

 and direction ; and obviously the members of a wandering family, 

 kept together by joint interests and jointly in antagonism with other 

 such families, wall become more integrated than the members of 

 a family associated with other families in a primitive tribe, all the 

 members of which have certain joint interests, and are jointly in 

 antagonism with external tribes. Just as we have seen that larger 

 social aggregates become coherent by the cooperation of their mem- 

 bers in conflict with neighboring like aggregates, so with this 

 smallest social aggregate constituted by the nomadic family. Of 

 the differentiations that simultaneously arise, the same may be said. 

 As the government of a larger society is evolved during its struggles 

 with other such societies, so is the government of this smallest society. 

 And as here the society and the family are one, the development of 

 the regulative structure of the society becomes the development of 

 the regulative family structure. Moreover, analogy suggests that the 

 higher organization given by this discipline to the family group makes 

 it a better component of societies afterward formed than are family 

 groups which have not passed through this discipline. Already we 

 have seen that great nations arise only by aggregation and reaggre- 

 gation : small communities have first to acquire some consolidation 

 and structure ; then they admit of union into compound communities, 

 which, when well integrated, may again be compounded into still 

 larger communities ; and so on. It now appears that social evolution 

 is most favored when this process begins with the smallest groups 

 the families : such groups, made coherent and definite in the way de- 

 scribed, and afterward compounded and recompounded, having origi- 

 nated the highest societies. 



