Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/283

Rh after a contrary system. The general principle now is, that the benefits which come to him shall be proportioned to his merits. Though parental aid, not abruptly ending, may still sometimes soften the effects of this social law, yet the mitigation of them is but partial; and, apart from parental aid, this social law is but in a small degree traversed by private generosity. Then, when middle life has been reached, and parental aid has ceased, the stress of the struggle becomes greater, and the adjustment of payment to service more rigorous. Clearly with a society, as with a species, survival depends on conformity to both of these antagonist principles. Import into the family the law of the society, and let children from infancy upward have life-sustaining supplies proportioned to their life-sustaining labors, and the society disappears forthwith by death of all its young. Import into the society the law of the family, and let the life-sustaining supplies be inversely proportioned to the life-sustaining labors, and the society decays from the increase of its least worthy members, and disappearance of its most worthy members: it must fail to hold its own in the struggle with other societies, which allow play to the natural law that prosperity shall vary as efficiency.

Hence the necessity of maintaining this cardinal distinction between the ethics of the family and the ethics of the state—hence the fatal result if family disintegration goes so far that family policy and state policy become confused. Unqualified generosity must remain the principle of the family while offspring are passing through their earliest stages; and generosity, more and more qualified by justice, must remain its principle as offspring are approaching maturity. Conversely, the principle of the society must ever be, justice qualified by generosity in private actions, as far as the individual natures of citizens prompt; and unqualified justice in the corporate acts of the society to its members. However fitly in the battle of life among adults, the strict proportioning of rewards to merits may be tempered by private sympathy in favor of the inferior; nothing but evil can result if this strict proportioning is so interfered with by public arrangements that demerit profits at the expense of merit.

And now to sum up the several conclusions, connected though heterogeneous, to which our survey of the family has brought us.

That there are connections between polygyny and the militant type, and between monogamy and the industrial type, we found good evidence. Partly the relation between militancy and polygyny is entailed by the stealing of women in war; and partly it is entailed by the mortality of males and resulting surplus of females where war is constant. In societies advanced enough to have some industrial organization, the militant classes remain polygynous, while the industrial classes become generally monogamous; and an ordinary trait of the despotic ruler, evolved by habitual militancy, is the possession of numerous