If we pass from animals to man, the situation remains the same, and the tendency to social life, in spite of its manifold adaptations, does not change its nature; it is always at bottom a solidarity and a reciprocity of services, determined by the conditions of human existence and variable as they. We need not come back to this; but the question already hinted at—that of the relation between the emotional manifestations serving as a basis to the family on the one hand, and those which are the foundation of social life on the other hand—presents itself anew. We cannot evade it, if we desire any light on the origin of the social feelings.
If we assume the family as the primitive fact which, by its increase, produced the clan, and afterwards, more complex aggregates, such as tribes, connected with each other by the memory of a common ancestor and at last subject to the authority of a patriarch-king, the social development is simply an expansion of the natural family. On this hypothesis, the domestic tendencies (founded on reproduction) are primary; the social tendencies are derivative and of secondary or tertiary formation.
If, on the contrary, we consider the smallest social groups (hordes, clans, or whatever other name they may be called by) as existing by themselves, independently of the domestic group, the tendency to live in societies must be considered as irreducible and self-determined; there is only one more general emotional phenomenon whence it could be derived, viz., sympathy.
Evidently, this question cannot be settled a priori, but only by the interpretation of facts. Now there is no lack of documents, supplied by ethnology from observations on actually existing primitive peoples, by the history of the remotest epochs, and by the literary monuments of the earliest ages, which are the echo of prehistoric times. There is no lack, either, of authorised works on the subject: MacLennan, Bachofen, Tylor, Sumner Maine, Starcke, Westermarck—to cite only a few at random. Although there is much disagreement, both as to the facts and the interpretation of the facts, the probability is very slight in favour of the priority of the family, very great in favour of two distinct developments with inevitable points of contact and interference.
Let us briefly recall the most generally admitted results of research into the evolution of the family and the progress of social development.
1. The evolution of the family has certainly not proceeded in all places in the same way, a circumstance which always permits the critic to oppose facts to the view he is combating. A disease inherent in the human mind induces most writers to try and refer everything to one formula, to impose on facts that perfect unity which, in such matters, does not appear very probable. Those who assign the greatest length of time to the evolution of the family admit three stages: promiscuity, matriarchate, patriarchate.
The period of primitive promiscuity (Bachofen, MacLennan, Girard-Teulon, etc.) is contested and rejected by many authorities. In any case, it does not seem as if we could establish the rule without a great number of exceptions. Not to speak, however, of archaic institutions which have been interpreted in this sense, and as survivals, there are still certain Tartar populations which approach this stage. At Hawaii, the individual was related to the whole horde, age alone determining the relationships: every one called all the old people indiscriminately grandfather and grandmother; all those who, as far as age went, might be his parents, father and mother; all those of his own generation, brothers and sisters; and so on for sons and daughters, grandsons and grand-daughters. These five terms expressed all known degrees of kinship. We may note, in passing, that a very weak psychological argument has been put forward in order to disprove the existence of this period—viz., that the natural jealousy of man would have rendered promiscuity impossible, at least for any length of time. Those who have hazarded such reasoning have been too ready to judge primitive man by civilised standards. However this may be, such a mass, without individual relationships, is rather a society than a family; or rather, it is an undifferentiated state, which might be compared to the lowest form of animal societies (the nutritive), which also is undifferentiated.
In the period of the matriarchate, which appears to have lasted for a considerable time, the mother is the centre of the family. This domestic form, coexisting with polygamy, polyandry, and even with monogamy, has left so many traces, and is still met with in so many different races and countries, from the ancient Egyptians and Etruscans to the present natives of Sumatra and some regions of Africa, that there is no dispute on the subject. The woman gives her name to the children, kinship is reckoned, and the inheritance of property (though not always that of political dignities) descends, in the female line; the position of most importance is filled, not by the father, but the uncle—the mother’s brother. The causes of the matriarchal system have been much discussed. Did it originate in an assumption that the true father was unknown, or in a common opinion of his insignificance? Whatever view may be adopted, it seems to me reasonable to compare the matriarchate with the predominating system among animals—i.e., maternal societies where the male is not admitted.
The patriarchate (agnatio) which makes the father the centre of the family brings us down to the historic epoch, to which it was even anterior in some parts of the globe. Its appearance is saluted in lyrical terms by Bachofen as the triumph of ideas over matter: “By the spiritual principle of paternity the chains of tellurism were broken;” it was a conquest of mind over material nature—over what can be seen and touched.[[176]] It is not known how it came about, whether by adoption or by a pretence of childbirth. In any case, it corresponds with the admission of the male into animal societies.
2. The development of social life is quite otherwise. It would be foreign to our purpose to retrace its successive phases; let us confine ourselves to the question of origin. What was primitive man? On this point much has been written by way of argument and conjecture. H. Spencer, in his Sociology (vol. i.), has made a complete restoration from prehistoric documents, burial-mounds, and more especially from the condition of contemporary savages. Nothing proves that this picture will suit all classes; there have existed not one primitive man, but primitive men differing considerably, according to race and environment.