84 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



learns that unless he fulfills his part of the family 

 obligations he will soon cease to have a family. Thus 

 each person in the family comes to live a life some- 

 what limited by his relations to others. Here is mani- 

 festly the foundation of duty. 



The question of the origin of the family may best 

 be postponed to a later chapter. At this point we 

 notice only that the family with its duties was the 

 beginning rather than the end of development. The 

 process of reproduction would of itself increase the 

 size of the family, and as the children themselves 

 began to have offspring the natural group would 

 soon come to consist of a large number of individuals 

 connected by a common family bond. Such growing 

 groups might perhaps sometimes remain together 

 as a unit, or they might perhaps have soon broken to 

 pieces. We know too little of the history of early 

 peoples to be able to determine which was more com- 

 mon and we know nothing that will tell us what was 

 the primitive condition among men. But this much 

 we do know. After a time groups larger than fam- 

 ilies, which we call clans, or tribes, began to be 

 formed. Sometimes these clans seem to have been 

 overgrown families, while at other times it seems that 

 they were composed of the union of families at first 

 distinct and isolated. But whatever may have been 

 their origin, groups of families appeared in all races 

 of men, or at least in all races that showed them- 

 selves capable of development. The few races where 

 such larger communities failed to appear have re- 

 mained the lowest of all the races of men. 



The Beginning of Duties. — All evidence points to the 

 conclusion that the earliest condition of the human 

 families was one of constant hostility to all other 



