THE FAMILY
The conditions of the modern family, in the northern countries particularly, have in reality become almost artificial; and it seems probable that, in the near future, the family will be completely disintegrated.
In France, especially amongst the bourgeoisie, the family appears to me likely to remain for a long time what it has been heretofore, because it constitutes an association the members of which, closely grouped, protect their common interests, whether commercial or industrial.
This family, representing a society in the possession of property, will exist as long as its members, in virtue of their fellowship, preserve intact their old social conditions, each of them continuing to have an interest in the success of their common enterprise.
In Spain, where the Moorish government has left so many traces of its primitive organisation, the family still continues in a state of slavery, a state wherein the woman glories.
But the question here is not of these two particular cases, where the maintaining of the family group serves the interests of the man, the head, the master; for the family differs according to different centres, countries, customs, and castes.
To come to more general statements, we must first go back to the fountain-head, and consider the family in its evolution through the course of civilisation.
The family, as it first appears in the history of humanity, was a patriarchal association formed of the father, mother and children. There was no binding marriage, but repeated unions. The conditions were such that the women were for all men indiscriminately, and the children knew no father in particular. This state of things in many cases continued so long that the Christian Church was obliged, at its birth, to wink at this communism. Herodotus tells us that the children of the Lycians bore the name of their mother; Varro assures us that it was the same in Athens, and that the woman, being the producer of wealth, was the only one to inherit.