BIOLOGY IN HUMAN AFFAIRS 



This latter attribute should be as obvious as the former. 

 Man has neither tusks nor claws, neither thick hide nor 

 furry coat. He is devoid of specialized anatomical structures 

 for offense or defense. These his ancestor did not need so 

 long as he was a tree-dwelling, fruit-eating animal. But 

 the transformation of this ancestor into a land ape was a 

 momentous step, for otherwise he must have remained 

 immured in the tropical forests and could never have 

 begun his conquest of the globe. But with this descent 

 from the trees he must soon have perished had he not 

 acquired distinctive ways of maintaining himself. More- 

 over, the human infant, as John Fiske long ago pointed 

 out, is not only extremely helpless, but reaches self- 

 dependence at a later age than any other creature in the 

 animal kingdom. Human survival, therefore, required 

 mutual aid or cooperative effort, first, between parents in 

 the rearing of offspring; and second, between fellows, in 

 the chase and in warfare. This situation has given rise to 

 an enormous literature discussing the questions whether 

 man has a parental instinct, maternal and paternal, and a 

 gregarious instinct. Suffice it here to say that the parental 

 patterns, however much they may differ from group to 

 group in consequence of cultural differences, seem every- 

 where to be based on clearly marked instinctive tendencies. 

 Even male man everywhere reveals a tender regard for 

 children and an easily developed willingness to labor for 

 their maintenance. In the earliest stages of human culture, 

 except in extremely favorable habitats, it seems difficult 

 to account for the preservation of mother and infant in 

 the absence of an instinctive tendency of the male to remain 

 close at hand to ward off enemies and to assist in main- 

 tenance. It is true that he might have done so out of a 

 desire for companionship or as a consequence of habit and 

 the memory of moments of sex gratification. But whatever 

 theory one may adopt, the facts remain that the family 



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