120 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS. 



Bagehot, AV. — Physics and Politics. 

 CooLEY, C. H. — Social Organization. 

 GiDDiNGS, F. H. — The Principles of Sociology. 

 GiDDiNGS, F. 11. — Descriptive and Historical Sociology. 

 GuMPLOwicz, L. — 21ie Outlines of Sociology. 

 Kropotkin, p. — Mutual Aid. 

 Sumner, W. G. — Folkways. 



Note. John Fiske tlioujilit that the family was the chief factor in 

 social evolution which brought about the development of man's higher 

 emotional, moral and intellectual nature. The human nervous system is 

 such a complex thing that its development is extended over a considerable 

 period. During the period of helplessness, parental instincts led one or 

 both parents to care for the young. Hence the prolongation of infancy 

 served to keep the parents together for longer and longer periods in 

 successive epochs. In this way the family became the source of associated 

 life. Giddings considers that Fiske's theory reverses the probable order 

 of cause and effect. The complex brain and nervous system which 

 brought about the prolongation of infancy could only have developed as a 

 consequence of the stimulating relationships of social life. Hence there 

 must have been association before the family group appeared. Whatever 

 its form, this primitive social life was sufficiently stimulating to cause 

 the adjustment in nervous structure which resulted in the prolongation 

 of infancy, and this, in turn, resulted in the family. Thus it is seen 

 that the family was not the single original germ from which society 

 grew. On this point others have written. Petrucci says, "The family, 

 therefore, is not essential to the formation of societies. The elan may 

 sometimes be an extension of the family, but in certain animal spe- 

 cies, as in man himself, it is not always the direct line of parentage 

 which is at the basis of the group. Sometimes, furthermore, the group 

 can be established only when the family disappears." In discussing the 

 origin of human society, Kropotkin says that anthrojjology "has estab- 

 lished beyond any doubt that mankind did not begin its life* in the shape 

 of small isolated families. Far from being a primitive form of organiza- 

 tion, the family is a very late product of human evolution. . . . Societies, 

 bands, or tribes — not families — were the primitive form of organization 

 of mankind and its earliest ancestors. . . . None of the higher mammals, 

 save a few carnivores and a few undoubtedly decaying species of apes 

 (orang-outans and* gorillas) , live in small families, isolatedly struggling 

 in the woods. .Ml others live in societies." For a more complete discus- 

 sion, sec Parmelccj TIic /b'cicnoe of Human Behavior, pp. 399-421. 



Note. — More ample treatment of the principles of social selection and 

 societal selection, principles merely touched upon in the preceding 

 chapter, will be found in Appendix I, Social Selection, pp. 297-310. 



