516 PROGRESS OF SCIENCE IN THE CENTURY. 



of the leading biological ideas were originally sug- 

 gested to biology by students of social phenomena. 

 There is no other basis than that furnished by histor- 

 ical research, helped by the present persistence of 

 simple societary forms which, if not exactly primi- 

 tive, do to some extent suggest what primitive condi- 

 tions may have been like. 



Beginning of Society. The problem of the origin 

 of the primitive social group is so difficult that we 

 are forced at present to an eclectic position, admit- 

 ting the value of quite a number of distinct sug- 

 gestions. 



(a) Some, like Rousseau, have pointed to man's 

 genetic filiation to a stock which shows many illus- 

 trations of family organisation and gregariousness. 

 His view may be summed up in the words: Man 

 did not make society, (pre-human) society made 

 man. To this it may be objected that the apes most 

 nearly related to man are not strictly gregarious. 



(b) Darwin and others have supposed that primi- 

 tive man was too weak to stand alone, and that he 

 was forced in self-defence to be social. To this it 

 may be objected that not a few uncivilized races live 

 in small and scattered groups, with no more sociabil- 

 ity than the mild and timorous chimpanzees. 



(c) Many have emphasised the function of the 

 family in developing sympathetic feelings, which 

 diffused to a wider circle. Thus Prof. Fiske in 

 his Cosmic Philosophy has maintained that the 

 transition from animal gregariousness to human so- 

 ciality was due to the relations of parents to off- 

 spring, the prolonged period of helpless infancy 

 being of especial importance. But the difficulty is 

 to account for the diffusion of domesticity, and it 

 is evident that the consciousness of kind, which 



