110 A Century of Science 



of permanent relations between mother and infant, 

 and the approximation toward steady relations on 

 the part of the male parent, came to bring about 

 the family, and gradually to knit those organiza- 

 tions which we know as clans. 



Here we come to another stage, another step for- 

 ward. The instant society becomes organized in 

 clans, natural selection cannot let these clans be 

 broken up and die out, the clan becomes the chief 

 object or care of natural selection, because if you 

 destroy it you retrograde again, you lose all you 

 have gained ; consequently, those clans in which the 

 primeval selfish instincts were so modified that the 

 individual conduct would be subordinated to some 

 extent to the needs of the clan, those are the ones 

 which would prevail in the struggle for life. In 

 this way you gradually get an external standard to 

 which man has to conform his conduct, and you get 

 the germs of altruism and morality ; and in the pro- 

 longed affectionate relation between the mother and 

 the infant you get the opportunity for that develop- 

 ment of altruistic feeling which, once started in 

 those relations, comes into play in the more general 

 relations, and makes more feasible and more work- 

 able the bonds which keep society together, and 

 enable it to unite on wider and wider terms. 



So it seems that from a very small beginning we 



