ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 61 



II. 



Next the vital wants, as a sociologic force, may be counted the 

 group of social instincts. The sexual appetite which perpetuates 

 the race and furnishes the basis of the family, the most natural and 

 most persistent form of social organization, stands foremost of these, 

 but it does not stand alone. Working with it is the love of off- 

 spring, and next to this comes that desire of companionship which 

 we may call the social instinct proper. 



To the student of modern civilization it matters little by what 

 long evolutions these instincts gathered their present form and force ; 

 they impel men to live in communities and support the complex 

 structure of society. Acting among men in the savage state, they 

 gather them into tribes with scarcely more of organization than the 

 cattle that feed in herds or the birds that fly in flocks. But develop- 

 ing with the advance of mankind in intelligence, by a process simi- 

 lar to that noticed in the useful arts, they finally produce highly organ- 

 ized society and states, with all their array of social and political 

 interests and institutions. 



The social instinct is strengthened as men find that society affords 

 additional safety against enemies and widens the field of their arts 

 and co-operations. Self-interest acts in the same direction as the 

 social feeling and doubles its effects ; but we may doubt whether 

 these selfish advantages of safety and profit sufficiently account for 

 the existence and power of the social instinct. 



I have grouped together the three facts of the sexual, the paren- 

 tal, and the proper social desires; but each of these gives also its 

 own peculiar results in our civilization. Out of the sexual desire 

 grow all marriage institutions, and as the human species seem natur- 

 ally to associate in pairs, all abnormal institutions, like polygamy 

 and polyandrya, must result not from natural instinct but from some 

 necessities of savage society. The strong feeling in favor of the 

 monogamous family shows that the native disposition of mankind 

 is towards pairs and not towards herds. 



The sexual instinct would give simply a married pair; the off- 

 spring instinct builds the permanent family. The love of offspring 

 is a sort of extension of self-love — the widening and perpetuation 

 of name and of personal power and possessions. It thus tends to 

 the creation of aristocracies and dynasties. 



The social instinct added causes the family to become persistent 



