Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/384

370 bad example of narrow-minded heathen thousands of years ago, who treated the Christians very much as many Christians now treat those who are devoted to the gospel of science.

commend to those students of social questions who are interested in their scientific aspects the essay "On the Evolution of the Family," by Mr. Herbert Spencer, which was begun in the June and is concluded in our present number. The article is an instructive illustration of what is properly meant by social science, and it also shows what is gained for the subject by investigating its phenomena from the standpoint of evolution. It is obvious that we can know little of the nature of the family until we have a right idea of its origin; and it is equally evident that it cannot be intelligently and wisely dealt with, either by social or political arrangements, on a false theory of its derivation and consequent erroneous views of its constitution. It is a current belief that the family is as old as humanity, and is an indestructible element of human society, and much the same thing everywhere. Even such inquirers into the philosophy of political history as Mr. Maine commence their researches by assuming the family or patriarchal group as a starting point. But on the theory of evolution this form of the domestic relations must be accounted for. The patriarchal condition was an outgrowth of earlier conditions, the complex resultant of a preexisting state which there is reason to believe was far more prolonged than the period that has elapsed since the family was instituted. Be that as it may, the point of view now gained is that of the family as a growth, a product of the slow interaction of various natural agencies, and an institution therefore that is liable to impairment, disintegration, and decay.

This conception of the family gives an interest to the question of its relation to the state that no other hypothesis enforces. The family is older than the state, and grew up without it by natural laws and through long domestic experience and social discipline. The state is a subsequent development, a new direction of the power of society which is liable to be so exercised as to disturb and modify in serious ways the domestic relations. A child cannot build a house, but it can burn it down; the state did not make the family, but it can mar and destroy it. If, as Mr. Spencer alleges, "the salvation of every society depends on the maintenance of an absolute opposition between the régime of the family and the régime of the state," governmental tendencies become a matter of the gravest social concern. And these considerations acquire additional force in a country like this, where the whole people are given over to politics, and where there is a universal passion for experimenting with society under a superstitious delusion in regard to the omnipotence of legislation. If the principle laid down by Spencer be a true one, then are the functions of government sharply limited, and, by transcending them, the state to that extent usurps domestic functions, and becomes destructive of the family. The family grew up and became consolidated, as we may say, under pressure of necessities and responsibilities that could not be escaped, as there was no state upon which parents could roll off their burdens. But the state has come, and besides its essential duty of protecting the common rights, it is becoming more and more called upon to take care of the people, to improve the condition of the people, to take charge of their children, in short to assume the "parental" function. We have already gone so far in our state meddling with the work of education and relieving parents from the responsible care of their children, that the demand is now urgently made by