THE FAMILY INSTINCTS 211 



parental authority is likely to pass from the individual 

 to the State. We cannot affect to view the process 

 with uneasiness. All the great social problems now 

 claiming attention — problems of disease, poverty, edu- 

 cation, and even heredity — are only to be solved by 

 such wholesale measures as the State can undertake. 

 The family is too small a unit for the purposes of 

 scientific experiment ; the head of the family must 

 subordinate himself to the head of the community. 

 In the ancient civilisations parental authority decayed 

 before anything was ready to take its place. The 

 society of the present day is more happily circum- 

 stanced, and as the logical result of the social tend- 

 encies above traced we may confidently look forward 

 to an application of the principles of social science 

 upon a scale hitherto unknown. 



