524 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY. 



One further possibility of domestic evolution remains. The last 

 component to show itself among the feelings Avhich hold the family to- 

 gether, the care of parents by offspring, is the one which has most 

 room for increase. Absent in brutes, small among primitive men, con- 

 siderable among the partially civilized, and tolerably strong among the 

 best of those around us, filial affection is a feeling that admits of 

 much further growth, which is needed to make the cycle of domestic 

 life complete. At present, the latter days of the old whose married 

 children live away from them are made dreary by the lack of those 

 remaining pleasures to be derived from the constant society of de- 

 scendants ; but the time will come when this evil will be met by an at- 

 tachment of adults to parents which, if not as strong as that of aged 

 parents to children, approaches it in strength. 



Further development in this direction will not, however, occur 

 under social arrangements which jjartially absolve parents from the 

 care of offspring. A stronger feeling to be displayed by child for 

 parent in later life must be established by a closer intimacy between 

 parent and child in early life. No such higher stage is to be reached 

 by walking in the ways followed by the Chinese for these two thou- 

 sand years. We shall not rise to it by imitating, even partially, the 

 sanguinary Mexicans, whose children, at the age of four, or sometimes 

 later, were delivered over to be educated by the priests. We shall 

 not improve family feeling by approaching toward the arrangements 

 of tlie Koossa-Caffres, among whom " all children above ten or eleven 

 years old are publicly instructed under the inspection of the chief." 

 This latest of the domestic affections will not be fostered by retro- 

 grading toward customs like those of the Andamanese, and, as early as 

 possible, changing the child of the family into the child of the tribe. 

 Contrariwise, such a progress Avill be achieved only in proportion as 

 both moral and intellectual culture are carried on by parents to an 

 extent now rarely attempted. When the unfolding minds of children 

 are no longer thwarted, and stunted, and deformed, by the mechan- 

 ical lessons of stupid teachers when instruction, instead of giving 

 mutual pain, gives mutual pleasure by ministering in proper order to 

 faculties which are severally eager to appropriate fit knowledge pre- 

 sented in fit forms when, with a wide diffusion of adult culture, 

 joined with rational ideas of teaching, there goes a spontaneous un- 

 folding of the juvenile mind such as is even now occasionally indi- 

 cated by exceptional facility of acquisition when the earlier stages 

 of education passed through in the domestic circle have become, as 

 they will in ways scarcely dreamed of at present, daily aids to the 

 strengthening of sympathy, intellectual and moral, leaving only the 

 more special cultures to be carried on by others ; then will the latter 

 days of life be smoothed by a greater filial care, reciprocating the 

 greater parental care bestowed in earlier life. 



