ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE FAMILY. 265 



unit. But Avhen the imperfectly-formed families with their domesti- 

 cated animals, and the family and the society, are thus separate into 

 distinct groups, made identical when the cooperations carried on 

 are between individuals domestically related as well as socially re- 

 lated, then the family becomes defined, compact, organized ; and its 

 controlling agency gains strength because it is at once parental and 

 political. This organization which the pastoral group gets by being 

 at once family and society, and which is gradually perfected by con- 

 flict and survival of the fittest, it carries into settled life. But set- 

 tled life entails multiplication into numerous siich groups adjacent to 

 one another ; and in these changed circumstances each of the groups 

 is sheltered from some of the actions which originated its organiza- 

 tion and exposed to other actions which tend to disorganize it. 

 Though there still arise quarrels among the multiplying families, yet, 

 as their blood-relationship is now a familiar thought, which persists 

 longer than it would have done had they wandered away from one 

 another generation after generation, the check to antagonism is 

 greater. Further, the worship of a common ancestor, in which they 

 can now more readily join at settled intervals, acts as a restraint on 

 their hatreds, and so holds them together. Again, the family is no 

 longer liable to be separately attacked by enemies ; but a number of 

 the adjacent families are simultaneously invaded and simultaneously 

 resist : cooperation among them is induced. Throughout subsequent 

 stages of social growth this cooperation increases ; and the families 

 jointly exposed to like external forces tend to integrate. Already we 

 have seen that by a kindred process such communities as tribes, as 

 feudal lordships, as small kingdoms, become consolidated into larger 

 communities; and that along with the consolidation caused by coop- 

 eration, primarily for offense and defense, and subsequently for other 

 purposes, there goes a gradual obliteration of the divisions between 

 them, and a substantial fusion. Here we recognize the like process 

 as taking place with these smallest groups. Quite hai-rnonizing with 

 this general interpretation are the special interpretations which Sir 

 Henry Maine gives of the decline of the patria potestas among the 

 Romans. He points out how father and son had to perform their 

 civil and military functions on a footing of equality wholly unlike their 

 domestic footing ; and how the consequent separate acquisition of 

 authority, power, spoils, etc., by the son, gradually undermined the 

 paternal despotism. Individuals of the family ceasing to work to- 

 gether exclusively in their unlike relations to one another, and com- 

 ing to work together under like relations to state authority and to 

 enemies, the public cooperation and subordination grew at the expense 

 of the family cooperation and subordination. Not only militant activ- 

 ities, but also industrial activities in the large aggregates eventually 

 formed, conduced to this result. In a recent work on " Bosnia and 

 Herzegovina," Mr. Arthur J. Evans, describing the Slavonic house- 



