DOMESTIC RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 515 



feeble where the family is rudimentary and gaining strength as the 

 family develops, serves in another way to lessen the sacrifice of the 

 individual to the maintenance of the species, and begins, contrari- 

 wise, to make the maintenance of the species conduce to the more 

 prolonged life, as well as to the higher life, of the individual, 



A fact not yet named remains. Evolution of the higher types of 

 family, like evolution of the higher types of society, has gone hand- 

 in-hand with evolution of liuman intelligence and feeling. The gen- 

 eral truth that there exists a necessary connection between the nature 

 of the social unit and the nature of the social aggregate, and that 

 each continually moulds and is moulded by the other, is a truth which 

 holds of domestic organization as well as of political organization. 

 The ideas and sentiments which make possible any more advanced 

 phase of associated life, whether in the family or in the state, imply a 

 preceding phase by tlie experiences and discipline of which they 

 were acquired; and these, again, a next preceding phase; and so 

 from the beginning. On turning to the last part of the " Principles 

 of Psychology" (edition of 1872), containing chapters on " Develop- 

 ment of Conceptions," "Sociality and Sympathy," "Ego-Altruistic 

 Sentiments," " Altruistic Sentiments," the reader will find it shown 

 how the higher forms alike of intellect and feeling, made possible 

 only by the social environment, evolve as this environment evolves 

 each increment of advance in the one being followed by an increment 

 of advance in the other. And carrying out this doctrine he will see 

 that since altruism plays an important part in developed family life, 

 the higher domestic relations have become possible only as the adapta- 

 tion of man to the social state has progressed.' 



In considering deductively the connections between the forms of 

 domestic life and the forms of social life, and in showing how these 

 are in each type of society related to one another because jointly 

 related to the same type of individual character, it will be convenient 

 to deal simultaneously with the marital arrangement, the family struct- 

 ure, the status of women, and the status of children. 



Primitive life, cultivating antagonism to prey and enemies, brute 

 or human daily yielding the egoistic satisfaction of conquest over 

 alien beings which prove to be weaker, daily gaining pleasure from 

 acts which entail pain maintains a type of nature which generates 

 coercive rule, social and domestic. Brute strength glorying in the 

 predominance which brings honor, and unchecked by regard for others' 

 welfare, seizes whatever women fancy prompts, adding to them and 

 changing them at will. And children, at the mercy of this utter self- 



* As included in the general theory of the adaptation of organic beings to their cir- 

 cumstances, this doctrine that the human mind, especially in its moral traits, is moulded 

 by the social state, pervades social statics ; and is especially insisted upon in the chapter 

 entitled " General Considerations." 



