Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/415

 THE ORIGIN OF SOCIETY 401

The origin of these intellectual elements which have given a peculiar color and form, so to speak, to human association we cannot here discuss except to say that they are themselves largely social products. Language is manifestly a social product, and the fact that man is the only speaking animal is correlated with the fact that he is pre-eminently the social animal. In the same way, the power of abstract thought and of syllogistic reasoning may be shown to depend largely upon language and other traits developed through association. Even self -consciousness itself, the consciousness of the unity and continuity of our mental life, which many make the distinctive mark of human society, is probably an outcome of association. It certainly depends for its development in the child largely upon language and the gen- eral give-and-take of the social life. All this, of course, is equivalent to saying that the differences between animal and human society are due to the natural social evolution of the human species; that the causes of these differences are to be sought in human social life itself, and not outside.

This is not saying, of course, that there may not be instincts peculiar to man as an animal which account in part for the differ- ences between animal and human society. But it is saying that these peculiar human instincts are not what give human society its distinctive character, but rather the intellectual elements; and that these instincts have evolved, and all man's instincts been modified, under the influence of a social life in which intellectual elements were powerful. Thus are harmonized the instinctive and the intellectual elements in human society.

The family life of man, as the primary form of human association, will serve to illustrate these points. Though man's family life in its essentials is undoubtedly an inheritance from his prehuman precursor, yet one is struck at once by the vast differences between the family life of man and that of the higher animals nearest him. There is, for example, in the human species no pairing season, little tendency to natural ornament during the period of courtship, but a strong tendency to artificial adornment, while there seems to be an instinct against incest,