146 UNIVERSAL EVOLUTION 



phratry, the family, the tribe, and the state, all forms 

 of society ever since man became a social being, has 

 occurred by the same method as the evolution of the 

 individual; viz., by natural selection, and the survival 

 of the fittest. The existence of each aggregate was 

 necessarily adapted to the physical necessities at the 

 time ; and whatever laws or customs grew out of the 

 conditions were, at the time and under all the circum- 

 stances, those conducive to the real happiness and wel- 

 fare of the social organization. Otherwise the social 

 organism would not have survived. A study of many 

 of them shows that the matter of sustentation, 

 and its necessary mode of production of food and 

 shelter, were the ruling factors in compelling the 

 individuals of each social community in determining 

 the form of government and the morals of its members. 

 The form of marriage called the group, or afterwards, 

 the pairing, in which the lineage was traced through 

 the mother, and during which the little property was 

 owned in common in the gens, or tribe, as existed among 

 the American Indians, was universal throughout the 

 world, at the same stage of what is called savagery, 

 or in the lower forms of barbarism. It is as true of 

 the Greeks. Romans or Germans in the same stage of 

 evolution as it was with the Celt and the Indian. Mon- 

 ogamy became a custom only when private property 

 came to be recognized and protected; and the monog- 

 amous family heralded our present form of civilization, 

 in which the lineage is traced through the father, be- 

 cause he is the producer of commodities and the holder 

 of the wealth. These changes necessitated new forms 

 of society, or community governed by new laws. This 

 relegated woman to the inferior position of a domestic 

 care-taker: whereas, in barbarism and savagery, she 



