344 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY, [pt. u. 



Sociality. Bear in mind that I am not indulging in pure 

 hypothesis. The prolongation of infancy accompanying the 

 development of intelligence, and the correlative extension 

 of parental feelings, are facts established by observation 

 wherever observation is possible. And to maintain that 'ihe 

 correlation of these phenomena was kept up during an epoch 

 which is hidden from observation, and can only be known by 

 inference, is to make a genuine induction, involving no other 

 assumption than that the operations of nature are uniform. 

 To him who is still capable of believing that the human race 

 was created by miracle in a single day, with all its attributes, 

 physical and psychical, compounded and proportioned just as 

 they now are, the present inquiry is, of course, devoid of 

 significance. But for the evolutionist there would seem to 

 be no alternative but to accept, when once propounded, the 

 present series of inferences. 



For the process here described, when long enough con- 

 tinued, must inevitably differentiate and integrate a herd or 

 troop of gregarious ape-like men into a number of small 

 family communities such as are now found among the lowest 

 savages. The prolonged helplessness of the offspring must 

 keep the parents together for longer and longer periods in 

 successive epochs ; and when at last the association is so long 

 kept up that the older children are growing mature while the 

 younger ones still need protection, the family relations begin 

 to become permanent. The parents have lived so long in 

 company, that to seek new companionships involves some 

 disturbance of engrained habits ; and meanwhile the older 

 sons are more likely to continue their original association 

 with each other than to establish associations with strangers, 

 since they have common objects to achieve, and common 

 enmities, bequeathed and acquired, with neighbouring fami- 

 lies. As the parent dies, the headship of the family thus 

 established devolves upon the oldest, or bravest, or most 

 sagacious male remaining. Thus the little group gradually 



