Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/554

536 class, "civil society, thereby designating economic life." They have some difficulty in disposing of the family, but are inclined to set it aside as an institution by itself, closely related to all the others, calling it the "primary social form," in which the cell, the individual unit, is found. I think it is Dr. Mulford who says: "The family is the natural and the normal condition of human existence. It is not the unit of society that is the ultimate and integral element, but it is the unitary form of society." Yet, as the individual is rarely separate from and outside of some kind of a family, and as social life is more generally concentrated in the family than in any other institution, I can not see that it makes the family more or less primary—that is, chief in importance—either by calling it the social form of the unit of society, or the unit of society itself. The old system of classification will probably continue to be used in philosophical if not scientific discussion of social institutions.

Conditions past as well as present must be understood before one would dare prescribe remedies for the present threatened disintegration of the family. A surgeon, before attempting a certain operation, has his assistant spend hours with the patient, writing up the history of the case, as to heredity, environment, causes and effects, not only for his own benefit and the patient's benefit, but for the benefit of surgery in general. A history or prehistory of the family case is altogether too long for a magazine article, but we may get kaleidoscopic if unsatisfactory views of the family in its evolution by means of such authorities as Moses, Homer, Christ, Paul, Plutarch, Dr. Hearn, Sir Henry Maine, Letourneau, Starcke, Professors Maurice, Drummond, and Small.

One should never judge of the ancient domestic institution by any modern standard, as is too commonly done. Neither is it well to use the modern name, family, but rather household, for the Semitic and Aryan domestic establishments, so extensive and complicated in their various ramifications, laws, and customs. From the Semitic (more properly Shemitic) household the modern family has evolved, although Herbert Spencer is at variance with the theory that the infancy of society is found in the patriarchal group. His evolution goes back to an aggregation of males and females without settled family arrangements. Be that as it may, it is a fact that all societies were originally organized on the "patriarchal theory," based on the scriptural history of the Hebrews. The Hebraic household was really a corporation. At the head of this corporation was the patriarchal father, with absolute power over wives, children, servants, household property, and in a representative way over the flocks and herds of his sons. Such households were those of Abraham, Jacob, and Laban.