ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE FAMILY. 267 



ress ? Are we on our way to a condition like that reached by sundry 

 communistic aggregates in America and elsewhere ? In these, along 

 with community of property, and along with something approaching 

 to community of wives, there goes community in the care of offspring : 

 the family is entirely disintegrated, and individuals are alone the units 

 recognized. We have made sundry steps toward such an organiza- 

 tion. Is the taking of those which remain only a matter of time? 



To this question a distinct answer is furnished by those biological 

 generalizations with which we set out. In Chapter II. were indicated 

 the facts that, with advance toward the highest animal types, there 

 goes increase of the period during which offspring are cared for by 

 parents ; that in the human race parental care, extending throughout 

 infancy and childhood, becomes elaborate as well as prolonged; and 

 that in the highest members of the highest races it continues into 

 early manhood : providing numerous aids to material welfare, taking 

 precautions for moral discipline, and employing complex agencies for 

 intellectual culture. Moreover, we saw that, along with this length- 

 ening and strengthening of the solicitude of pai'ent for child, there 

 grew up a reciprocal solicitude of child for parent. Among even the 

 highest animals, of sub-human types, this aid and protection of parents 

 by offspring is absolutely wanting. In the lower human races it is 

 but feebly marked : aged fathers and mothers being here killed and 

 there left to die of starvation ; and it becomes gradually more marked 

 as we advance to the hio;hest civilized races. Are we in the course 

 of further evolution to reverse all this ? Have those parental and 

 filial bonds, which have been growing closer and stronger during the 

 latter stages of organic development, suddenly become untrustworthy ? 

 and is the social bond to be trusted in place of them? Are the in- 

 tense feelings which have made the fulfillment of parental duties a 

 source of high pleasure, to be now regarded as valueless ? and is the 

 sense of public duty to children at large to be cultivated by each man 

 and woman as a sentiment better and more efficient than the parental 

 instincts and sympathies? Possibly Father Noyes and his disciples, 

 at Oneida Creek, will say Yes to each of these questions ; but prob- 

 ably few others will join in the Yes even of the many who are in 

 consistency bound to join. 



So far from expecting disintegi-ation of the family to go further, 

 we have reason to suspect that it has already gone too far. Probably 

 the rhythm of change, conforming to the usual law, has carried us 

 from the one extreme a long waj^ toward the other extreme ; and a 

 I'eturn-movement is to be looked for. A suggestive parallel may be 

 named. In early stages the only parental and filial kinship formally 

 recognized was that of mother and child ; after which, in the slow 

 course of progress, was reached the doctrine of exclusive male kin- 

 ship the kinship of child to mother being ignored; after which thei-e 

 came in another long period the establishment of kinship to both. 



