Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/411

 THE ORIGIN OF SOCIETY 397

tion, therefore, operates powerfully in this way alone to favor group life, have long been among the commonplaces of sociolo- gists. The conflict of group with group in the struggle for the possession of the material means of subsistence has been one of the most important factors in social evolution, especially in the way of integrating groups. It is not our purpose, however, to discuss the- workings of this factor in social evolution further than to point out that conflict, as a phase of the food-process, has contributed powerfully to the genesis and development of associa- tion or group life.

It is not, however, the food-process which has played the chief role in the genesis of association among animals. That honor belongs to the reproductive process, using that phrase in a broad way to cover all the activities connected with the birth and rearing of offspring. The birth and care of offspring are essential phases of the life-process, and at the same time are essentially social activities, since in all but the lowest forms of life they involve the co-operation of at least two individuals. Sexual reproduction, necessitating the interaction of two indi- viduals, lays a positive foundation for association. It is, how- ever, the production of immature or "child" forms which need prolonged and tender care on the part of one or both parents which gives rise to that most intimate form of association that we term the family, which produces and reproduces the social life from generation to generation and which becomes the basis, in large measure, of all later social organization. In the rela- tionship of the mother to the child we have the beginnings of that sympathetic social life, of which the family has remained the highest type and which has become the conscious goal of civilized human society. Society in the sympathetic sense, then, had its beginnings in the family, that is, in the relation of the child-form to the mother-form.

The relationship of the child-form to the parent-form be- comes more prolonged and increasingly important as organic evo- lution advances. While in the lower reaches of life the repro- ductive process is comparatively unimportant in its social results, in the higher animals with the prolongation of the period of