316 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 



to fulfil some one or other of the required conditions 

 people after people and nation after nation have come 

 together only to disperse, and leave no legacy behind 

 except the lesson — as yet in few cases understood — of 

 why they failed. 



Yet whether the road be straight or devious is of 

 little moment. The one significant thing is that it 

 rises. We have reached a stage in Evolution at 

 which physiological gains are guarded and accent- 

 uated, if not in an ethical interest, at least by eth- 

 ical factors becoming utilized by natural selection. 

 Henceforth affection becomes a power in the world ; 

 and whatever physiological adjustments continue to 

 go on beneath the surface, the most attached Families 

 will have a better chance of surviving and of trans- 

 mitting their moral characteristics to succeeding gen- 

 erations. The completion of the arch of Family Life 

 forms one of the great, if not the greatest of the land- 

 marks of history. If the crowning work of Organic 

 Evolution is the Mammalia ; the consummation of 

 the Mammalia is the Family. Physically, psychi- 

 cally, ethically, the Family is the masterpiece of 

 Evolution. The creation of Evolution, it was destined 

 to become the most active instrument and ally which 

 Evolution has ever had. For what is its evolutionary 

 significance? It is the generator and the repository of 

 the forces which alone can carry out the social and 

 moral progress of the world. There they rally when 

 they become enfeebled, there their excesses are coun- 

 terbalanced, and thence they radiate out, refined and 

 reinforced, to do their holy work. 



Looking at the mere dynamics of the question, the 

 Family contains all the machinery, and nearly all the 



