Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/339

Rh, and then family groups developing in the midst of the larger social groups, and acquiring special interests which render them finally hostile to other family groups. There can be but little question that the ants, termites, bees, and wasps, have passed through these various stages of association, and that the old social groups gradually broke up into minor family groups, which in turn have developed into extensive groups, combined on the principle of blood relationship.

This gradual evolution of the principle of association, beginning in the completely solitary or hermaphrodite tribes, and reaching its ultimate stage in the colonial or compound animals, of which we have a notable instance in the Siphonophora, or family compound of swimming polyps, in which the loss of individuality is complete, is a highly interesting phase of animal development, which we can not undertake to consider here as a whole. We may simply say that animals might be classified, from this point of view, as the truly solitary, the sexual, the social, the communal, and the colonial or compound.

The views above expressed lead directly to the consideration of primitive human societies, since these present a striking resemblance to those of the lower animals. The indications are, indeed, that the development of society everywhere follows one fixed course, and obeys one general law, and that human society has in no sense escaped this law, despite all the seeming irregularity of its development.

Man may properly be ranked with the ants, bees, and termites, as another instance of the communal animal, the beaver being his only vertebrate counterpart in this respect. Communalism probably did not exist with primitive man. He seems to have been originally a social animal, like the quadrumana, from whom it is assumed that he descended. Yet it is interesting to perceive that, at the opening of the historical period, the ancestors of all the present civilized races were in the communal stage of association, and under conditions which present a striking parallel to those of the lower tribes of communal animals.

Alike with the American Indians, the Mongolians and Semites of Asia, and the primitive Aryans, history opens-with strongly declared instances of the communal type of association. The original social groups, with few interests in common, had been replaced by well-defined family groups, with nearly all interests in common. The ancient association vanished as this new association developed, and the family became the basis of all social organization. We might, had we space, consider at some length the evolution of this new condition of human society. It doubtless had its basis in that slowly growing energy of the marriage sentiment, whose development has been traced by several recent writers. The primitive weak sense of union between husband, wife, and children gradually grew into a strong bond of association, whose strength was added to by the possession of a separate family property, which increased in value with the development of society.