THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR 231 
tells us * that anthropology “has established beyond any doubt 
that mankind did not begin its life in the shape of small 
isolated families. Far from being a primitive form of 
organization, the family is a very late product of human 
evolution. ... Societies, bands, or tribes—not families— 
were thus the primitive form of organization of mankind 
and its earliest ancestors.” And in support of his views he 
adduces the sexual communism which is said to be found in 
the lowest savages, and briefly traces the development of 
monogamy and the genesis of the family ideal as we conceive 
it. It may at once be admitted that in all probability man- 
kind did not have its origin in small isolated families. If we 
do not admit this we must accept the alternative hypothesis, 
that man was developed from an unsocial ancestor. For 
though the biological family is the starting-point of the 
community, it does not of course follow that wherever there 
is so much coherence between parents and offspring as to form 
a temporary family group, a social community must in due 
course arise. In such unsocial carnivora as the tiger, the 
temporary linkage of family life is strong while it lasts. But 
though mankind presumably originated in a prebuman race 
that had already reached some degree of social coherence, 
there remains behind the question—what was the origin of 
this social group? And to this question, Prince Kropotkine, 
in common with Darwin and Espinas, would probably answer 
without hesitation, that the primeval germ of the social com- 
munity lay in the prolonged coherence of the group of parents 
and offspring. In the unsocial animals the family separates 
and disintegrates before the offspring mate. But if the family 
continue to cohere, the mating of offspring will give rise to the 
continuity of coherence found in the herd, or troop, or tribe. 
For new family groups will be constantly arising before the 
old family groups have ceased to be associated. Thus would 
be afforded more opportunity for tradition than among the 
unsocial animals. 
* “Mutual Aid among Savages,” Nineteenth Century, April, 1891, pp. 
539, 040. 
