DOMESTIC INTEGEATION 251 



a unit, and of the necessity of his subordinating his individuality 

 to the higher interests of that society. We have seen the bene- 

 ficial influence of domestic integration on social life ; but domestic 

 integration, and the procreation of offspring, are results in their 

 turn of a principle more fundamental still. There is no reason 

 why men should prefer an orderly married life and the procrea- 

 tion of offspring, with all the responsibilities which family life 

 brings with it, to concubinage and the non-procreation of off- 

 spring, unless they are actuated by some moral principle to 

 which their individual desires consciously subordinate them- 

 selves. We must seek the origin of domestic institutions in the 

 more or less vague consciousness of their utility to society. In 

 early ages the individual was so dominated by the tribe of which 

 he was a member that the tdos of the tribe was also the tdos 

 of the individual, and vice versa. The stability of domestic life 

 was slowly brought about by the combined influence of two 

 factors — the complete subordination of the interests of the indi- 

 vidual to the interests of the tribe, and the growing conscious- 

 ness of the necessity of stable domestic life for the prosperity of 

 the tribe ; a consciousness which from the first must have tended 

 to develop and propagate itself as an effect of selection by the 

 sole survival of the tribes possessing stable domestic institutions. 

 However, in proportion as the primitive social aggregate, the 

 tribe, became extended and enlarged, its influence over the indi- 

 vidual diminished. It has receded farther and farther from the 

 individual, and the original identity between the interests of 

 the two has been obliterated. As the influence of the tribe 

 was no longer sufficient, it became indispensable for society to 

 find another principle capable of dominating the individual ; 

 otherwise the stability of domestic life must necessarily have 

 been undermined. The recognition by the Christian Church of 

 the sacramental and indissoluble character of marriage showS) 

 once more, the profound knowledge of the needs of society 

 always possessed by the Church ; the dogmas of the ecclesiastical 



