302 The Daisy and the Dandelion. [Sess. 
posite by the involucre. In monkeys we have the tie of 
relationship, but not of common language. To investigate 
the relative value of these two bonds is the object of my 
paper. 
Looking round Britain, as we see it in 1902, we must 
observe that the restricted group is everywhere the family— 
a man, woman, and children, living in one house. It may be 
a palace or a hut, but in each case there is a home—the pro- 
perty of the group. The house is the great family institution, 
just as fire is the great tribal institution and clothes the great 
individualist. Man was originally a naked savage. He be- 
came mainly socialist, individualist, or domestic according as 
he first developed and mainly cultivated a fire, clothes, or a 
hut. In India we have large aggregates. A family often 
does not break up for three or four generations, Cousins in 
the male line live together with their respective wives and 
children, and cook at a common fire. This is called in books 
a patriarchal family, but in my sense of the words it is not a 
family, but a small tribe, for the common fire is the centre, not 
the hut—but the fire represents Socialism, just as the hut 
represents the family instincts. The most socialistic races 
known are the savages of Australia. They have huts and fires, 
but no clothes. In Britain we have preserved perfectly the 
monogamic family, represented in Composite by the corolla, 
and the national organisation represented by the involucre. 
We have lost the tribal organisation, represented in the Com- 
posites by the palea of the receptacle, but the daisy and the 
dandelion have also lost these palea. . 
In the present day the Socialists wish to destroy the family 
in the interests of the nation. The palace is to be made less 
palatial, the hovel to be made more beautiful. In other 
words, the ray florets are to be shortened and the colour 
taken out of them, while the disk florets are to be lengthened 
and their colour deepened. A man is to be forced by law 
to leave his earnings not to his children, but to the State. 
Children are to be educated, not by their parents, but by the 
State. The daisy is to be turned into a dandelion, all the 
florets are to be of one colour, and the supposed advantage 
is, that in the dandelion all the florets resemble in shape the 
ray florets of the daisy. Of course we are all in part Socialists. 
