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SOCIOLOGY AND MODERN SOCIAL PROBLEMS
BY
CHARLES A. ELLWOOD, PH. D.
Professor of Sociology, University of Missouri
PREFACE
This book is intended as an elementary text in sociology as applied to modern social problems, for use in institutions where but a short time can be given to the subject, in courses in sociology where it is desired to combine it with a study of current social problems on the one hand, and to correlate it with a course in economics on the other. The book is also especially suited for use in University Extension Courses and in Teachers' Reading Circles.
This book aims to teach the simpler principles of sociology concretely and inductively. In Chapters I to VIII the elementary principles of sociology are stated and illustrated, chiefly through the study of the origin, development, structure, and functions of the family considered as a typical human institution; while in Chapters IX to XV certain special problems are considered in the light of these general principles.
Inasmuch as the book aims to illustrate the working of certain factors in social organization and evolution by the study of concrete problems, interpretation has been emphasized rather than the social facts themselves. However, the book is not intended to be a contribution to sociological theory, and no attempt is made to give a systematic presentation of theory. Rather, the student's attention is called to certain obvious and elementary forces in the social life, and he is left to work out his own system of social theory.
To guide the student in further reading, a brief list of select references in English has been appended to each chapter. Methodological discussions and much statistical and historical material have been omitted in order to make the text as simple as possible. These can be found in the references, or the teacher can supply them at his discretion.
The many authorities to whom I am indebted for both facts and interpretations of facts cannot be mentioned individually, except that I wish to express my special indebtedness to my former teachers, Professor Willcox of Cornell and Professors Small and Henderson of the University of Chicago, to whom I am under obligation either directly or indirectly for much of the substance of this book. The list of references will also indicate in the main the sources of whatever is not my own.
CHARLES A. ELLWOOD.
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I: THE STUDY OF SOCIETY
CHAPTER II: THE BEARING OF THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION UPON SOCIAL PROBLEMS
CHAPTER III: THE FUNCTION OF THE FAMILY IN SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
CHAPTER IV: THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY
CHAPTER V: THE FORMS OF THE FAMILY
CHAPTER VI: THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE FAMILY
CHAPTER VII: THE PROBLEM OF THE MODERN FAMILY
CHAPTER VIII: THE GROWTH OF POPULATION
CHAPTER IX: THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM
CHAPTER X: THE NEGRO PROBLEM
CHAPTER XI: THE PROBLEM OF THE CITY
CHAPTER XII: POVERTY AND PAUPERISM
CHAPTER XIII: CRIME
CHAPTER XIV: SOCIALISM IN THE LIGHT OF SOCIOLOGY
CHAPTER XV: EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS
INDEX
SOCIOLOGY AND MODERN SOCIAL PROBLEMS
CHAPTER I
THE STUDY OF SOCIETY
What is Society?—Perhaps the great question which sociology seeks to answer is this question which we have put at the beginning. Just as biology seeks to answer the question "What is life?"; zoölogy, "What is an animal?"; botany, "What is a plant?"; so sociology seeks to answer the question "What is society?" or perhaps better, "What is association?" Just as biology, zoölogy, and botany cannot answer their questions until those sciences have reached their full and complete development, so also sociology cannot answer the question "What is society?" until it reaches its final development. Nevertheless, some conception or definition of society is necessary for the beginner, for in the scientific discussion of social problems we must know first of all what we are talking about. We must understand in a general way what society is, what sociology is, what the relations are between sociology and other sciences, before we can study the social problems of to-day from a sociological point of view.
The word "society" is used scientifically to designate the reciprocal relations between individuals. More exactly, and using the term in a concrete sense, a society is any group of individuals who have more or less conscious relations to each other. We say conscious relations because it is not necessary that these relations be specialized into industrial, political, or ecclesiastical relations. Society is constituted by the mental interaction of individuals and exists wherever two or three individuals have reciprocal conscious relations to each other. Dependence upon a common economic environment, or the mere contiguity in space is not sufficient to constitute a society. It is the interdependence in function on the mental side, the contact and overlapping of our inner selves, which makes possible that form of collective life which we call society. Plants and lowly types of organisms do not constitute true societies, unless it can be shown that they have some degree of mentality. On the other hand, there is no reason for withholding the term "society" from many animal groups. These animal societies, however, are very different in many respects from human society, and are of interest to us only as certain of their forms throw light upon human society.
We may dismiss with a word certain faulty conceptions of society. In some of the older sociological writings the word society is often used as nearly synonymous with the word nation. Now, a nation is a body of people politically organized into an independent government, and it is manifest that it is only one of many forms of human society. Another conception of society, which some have advocated, is that it is synonymous with the cultural group. That is, a society is any group of people that have a common civilization, or that are bearers of a certain type of culture. In this case Christendom, for example, would constitute a single society. Cultural groups no doubt are, again, one of the forms of human society, but only one among many. Both the cultural group and the nation are very imposing forms of society and hence have attracted the attention of social thinkers very often in the past to the neglect of the more humble forms. But it is evident that all forms of association are of equal interest to the sociologist, though, of course, this is not saying that all forms are of equal practical importance.
Any form of association, or social group, which may be studied, if studied from the point of view of origin and development, whether it be a family, a neighborhood group, a city, a state, a trade union, or a party, will serve to reveal many of the problems of sociology. The natural or genetic social groups, however, such as the family, the community, and the nation, serve best to exhibit sociological problems. In this text we shall make particular use of the family, as the simplest and, in many ways, the most typical of all the forms of human association, to illustrate concretely the laws and principles of social development. Through the study of the simple and primary forms of association the problems of sociology can be much better attacked than through the study of society at large, or association in general.
From what has been said it may be inferred that society as a scientific term means scarcely more than the abstract term association, and this is correct. Association, indeed, may be regarded as the more scientific term of the two; at any rate it indicates more exactly what the sociologist deals with. A word may be said also as to the meaning of the word social. The sense in which this word will generally be used in this text is that of a collective adjective, referring to all that pertains to or relates to society in any way. The word social, then, is much broader than the words industrial, political, moral, religious, and embraces them all; that is, social phenomena are all phenomena which involve the interaction of two or more individuals. The word social, then, includes the economic, political, moral, religious, etc., and must not be thought of as something set in opposition to, for instance, the industrial or the political.
Society and its Products.—Beneath all the forms and processes of human society lies the fact of association itself. Industry, government, and civilization itself must be regarded as expressions of collective human life rather than vice versa. Industry, for example, is one side or aspect of man's social life, and must not be mistaken for society itself. Industry, government, religion, education, art, and the like, are all products of the social life of man. Among these coördinate expressions of collective human life, industry, being concerned with the satisfying of the material needs of men, is perhaps fundamental to the rest. But this must not lead to the mistaken view that the social life of man can be interpreted completely through his industrial life; for, as has just been said, beneath industry and all other aspects of man's collective life lies the biological and psychological fact of association. This is equivalent to saying that industry itself must be interpreted in terms of the biology and psychology of human association. In other words, industrial problems, political problems, educational problems, and the like must be viewed from the collective or social standpoint rather than simply as detached problems by themselves. We must understand the biological and psychological aspects of man's social life before we can understand its special phases.
The Origin of Society.—From the definition of society that we have given it is evident that society is something which springs from the very processes of life itself. It is not something which has been invented or planned by individuals. Life, in its higher forms at least, could not exist without association. From the very beginning the association of the sexes has been necessary for reproduction and for the care and rearing of offspring, and it has been not less necessary for the procuring of an adequate food supply and for protection against enemies. From the association necessary for reproduction has sprung family life and all the altruistic institutions of human society, while from the association for providing food supply have sprung society's industrial institutions. Neither society nor industry, therefore, has had a premeditated, reflective origin, but both have sprung up spontaneously from the needs of life and both have developed down to the present time at least with but little premeditated guidance. It is necessary that the student should understand at the outset that social organization is not a fabrication of the human intellect to any great degree, and the old idea that individuals who existed independently of society came together and deliberately planned a certain type of social organization is utterly without scientific validity. The individual and society are correlatives. We have no knowledge of individuals apart from society or society apart from individuals. What we do know is that human life everywhere is a collective or associated life, the individual being on the one hand largely an expression of the social life surrounding him and on the other hand society being largely an expression of individual character. The reasons for these assertions will appear later as we develop our subject.
What is Sociology?—The science which deals with human association, its origin, development, forms, and functions, is sociology. Briefly, sociology is a science which deals with society as a whole and not with its separate aspects or phases. It attempts to formulate the laws or principles which govern social organization and social evolution. This means that the main problems of sociology are those of the organization of society on the one hand and the evolution of society on the other. These words, organization and evolution, however, are used in a broader sense in sociology than they are generally used. By organization we mean any relation of the parts of society to each other. By evolution we mean, not necessarily change for the better, but orderly change of any sort. Sociology is, therefore, a science which deals with the laws or principles of social organization and of social change. Put in more exact terms this makes sociology, as we said at the beginning, the science of the origin, development, structure, and function of the forms of association. We may pass over very rapidly certain faulty conceptions of sociology. The first of these is that it is the study of social evils and their remedies. This conception is faulty because it makes sociology deal primarily with the abnormal rather than the normal conditions in society, and secondly, it is to be criticized because it makes sociology synonymous with scientific philanthropy. It is rather the science of philanthropy, which is an applied science resting upon sociology, that studies social evils and their remedies. This is not saying, of course, that sociology does not consider social evils, but that it considers them as incidents in the normal processes of social evolution rather than as its special matter. A second conception of sociology which is to be dismissed as inadequate is the conception that it is the science of social phenomena. This conception is not incorrect, but is somewhat vague, as there are manifestly other sciences of social phenomena, such as economics and political science. Such a conception of sociology would make it include everything in human society. A third faulty conception is that it is the science of human institutions. This is faulty because it again is too narrow. An institution is a sanctioned form of human association, while sociology deals with the ephemeral and unsanctioned forms, such as we see in the phenomena of mobs, crazes, fads, fashions, and crimes, as well as with the sanctioned forms. A fourth conception which might be criticized is that sociology is the science of social organization. This makes sociology deal with the laws or principles of the relations of individuals to one another, and of institutions to one another. It is to be criticized as faulty because it fails to emphasize the evolution of those relations. All science is now evolutionary in spirit and in method and believes that things cannot be understood except as they are understood in their genesis and development. It would, therefore, perhaps be more correct to define sociology as the science of the evolution of human interrelations than to define it simply as the science of social organization.
The Problems of Sociology.—The problems of sociology fall into two great classes; first, problems of the organization of society, and second, problems of the evolution of society. The problems of the organization of society are problems of the relations of individuals to one another and to institutions. Such problems are, for example, the influence of various elements in the physical environment upon the social organization; or, again, the influence of various elements in human nature upon the social order. These problems are, then, problems of society in a hypothetically stationary condition or at rest. For this reason Comte, the founder of modern sociology, called the division of sociology which deals with such problems Social Statics. But the problems which are of most interest and importance in sociology are those of social evolution. Under this head we have the problem of the origin of society in general and also of various forms of association. More important still are the problems of social progress and social retrogression; that is, the causes of the advancement of society to higher and more complex types of social organization and the causes of social decline. The former problem, social progress, is in a peculiar sense the central problem of sociology. The effort of theoretical sociology is to develop a scientific theory of social progress. The study of social evolution, then, that is, social changes of all sorts, as we have emphasized above, is the vital part of sociology; and it is manifest that only a general science of society like sociology is competent to deal with such a problem. Inasmuch as the problems of social evolution are problems of change, development, or movement in society, Comte proposed that this division of sociology be called Social Dynamics.
The Relations of Sociology to Other Sciences. [Footnote: For a fuller discussion of the relations of sociology to other sciences and to philosophy see my article on "Sociology: Its Problems and Its Relations" in the American Journal of Sociology for November, 1907.]—(A) Relations to Biology and Psychology. In attempting to give a scientific view of social organization and social evolution, sociology has to depend upon the other natural sciences, particularly upon biology and psychology. It is manifest that sociology must depend upon biology, since biology is the general science of life, and human society is but part of the world of life in general. It is manifest also that sociology must depend upon psychology to explain the interactions between individuals because these interactions are for the most part interactions between their minds. Thus on the one hand all social phenomena are vital phenomena and on the other hand nearly all social phenomena are mental phenomena. Every social problem has, in other words, its psychological and its biological sides, and sociology is distinguished from biology and psychology only as a matter of convenience. The scientific division of labor necessitates that certain scientific workers concern themselves with certain problems. Now, the problems with which the biologist and the psychologist deal are not the problems of the organization and evolution of society. Hence, while the sociologist borrows his principles of interpretation from biology and psychology, he has his own distinctive problems, and it is this fact which makes sociology a distinct science.
Sociology is not so easily distinguished from the special social sciences like politics, economics, and others, as it is from the other general sciences. These sciences occupy the same field as sociology, that is, they have to do with social phenomena. But in general, as has already been pointed out, they are concerned chiefly with certain very special aspects or phases of the social life and not with its most general problems. If sociology, then, is dependent upon the other general sciences, particularly upon biology and psychology, it is obvious that its relation to the special sciences is the reverse, namely, these sciences are dependent upon sociology. This is only saying practically the same thing as was said above when we pointed out that industry, government, and religion are but expressions of human social life. In other words, sociology deals with the more general biological and psychological aspects of human association, while the special sciences of economics, politics, and the like, generally deal with certain products or highly specialized phases of society.
(B) Relations to History. [Footnote: For a discussion of the practical relations between the teaching of history and of sociology, see my paper on "How History can be taught from a Sociological Point of View," in Education for January, 1910.] A word may be said about the relation of sociology to another science which also deals with human society in a general way, and that is history. History is a concrete, descriptive science of society which attempts to construct a picture of the social past. Sociology, however, is an abstract, theoretical science of society concerned with the laws and principles which govern social organization and social change. In a sense, sociology is narrower than history inasmuch as it is an abstract science, and in another sense it is wider than history because it concerns itself not only with the social past but also with the social present. The facts of contemporary social life are indeed even more important to the sociologist than the facts of history, although it is impossible to construct a theory of social evolution without taking into full account all the facts available in human history, and in this sense history becomes one of the very important methods of sociology. Upon its evolutionary or dynamic side sociology may be considered a sort of philosophy of history; at least it attempts to give a scientific theory which will explain the social changes which history describes concretely.
(C) Relations to Economics. Economics is that special social science which deals with the wealth-getting and wealth-using activities of man. In other words, it is concerned with the commercial and industrial activities of man. As has already been implied, economics must be considered one of the most important of the special social sciences, if not the most important. Yet it is evident that the wealth-getting and wealth-using activities of man are strictly an outgrowth of his social life, and that economics as a science of human industry must rest upon sociology. Sometimes in the past the mistake has been made of supposing that economics dealt with the most fundamental social phenomena, and even at times economists have spoken of their science as alone sufficient to explain all social phenomena. It cannot be admitted, however, that we can explain social organization in general or social progress in terms of economic development. A theory of progress, for example, in which the sole causes of human progress were found in economic conditions would neglect political, religious, educational, and many other conditions. Only a very one-sided theory of society can be built upon such a basis. Economics should keep to its own sphere of explaining the commercial and industrial activities of man and not attempt to become a general science dealing with social evolution. This is now recognized by practically all economists of standing, and the only question which remains is whether economics is independent of sociology or whether it rests upon sociology.
The view which has been presented thus far and which will be adhered to is that economics should rest upon sociology. That economics does rest upon sociology is shown by many considerations. The chief problem of theoretical economics is the problem of economic value. But economic value is but one sort of value which is recognized in society, moral and aesthetic values being other examples of the valuing process, and all values must express the collective judgment of some human group or other. The problem of economic value, in other words, reduces itself to a problem in social psychology, and when this is said it is equivalent to making economics dependent upon sociology, for social psychology is simply the psychological aspect of sociology. Again, industrial organization and industrial evolution are but parts or phases of social evolution in general, and it is safe to say that industry, both in its organization and evolution, cannot be understood apart from the general conditions, psychological and biological, which surround society. Again, many non-economic forces continually obtrude themselves upon the student of industrial conditions, such as custom, invention, imitation, standards, ideals, and the like. These are general social forces which play throughout all phases of human social life and so show the dependence of industry upon society in general, and, therefore, of economics upon sociology. Much more might be said in the way of concretely illustrating these statements, but the purpose of this text precludes anything but the briefest and most elementary statement of these theoretical facts.
(D) Relations to Politics. We have already said that the state is one of the chief forms of human association. The science which treats of the state or of government is known as political science or politics. It is one of the oldest of the social sciences, having been more or less systematized by Aristotle. The problems of politics are those of the origin, nature, function, and development of government. It is manifest that politics, both on its practical and theoretical sides, has many close relations to sociology. While the state or nation must not be confused with society in general, yet because the state is the most imposing, if not the most important, form of human association, the relations of politics and sociology must be very intimate. On the one hand, political scientists can scarcely understand the origin, nature, and proper functions of government without understanding more or less about the social life generally; and, on the other hand, the sociologist finds that one of the most important facts of human society is that of social control, or of authority. While political science deals only with the organized authority manifested in the state, which we call government, yet inasmuch as this is the most important form of social control, and inasmuch as political organization is one of the chief manifestations of social organization, the sociologist can scarcely deal adequately with the great problems of social organization and evolution without constant reference to political science.
An important branch of political science is jurisprudence, or the science of law. This, again, is closely related with sociology, on both its theoretical and practical sides. Law is, perhaps, the most important means of social control made use of by society, and the sociologist needs to understand something of the principles of law in order to understand the nature of the existing social order. On the other hand, the jurist needs to know the principles of social organization and evolution in general before he can understand the nature and purpose of law.
(E) Relations to Ethics. [Footnote: For a full statement of my views regarding the relations of sociology and ethics, see my article on "The Sociological Basis of Ethics," in the International Journal of Ethics for April, 1910.] Ethics is the science which deals with the right or wrong of human conduct. Its problems are the nature of morality and of moral obligation, the validity of moral ideals, the norms by which conduct is to be judged, and the like. While ethics was once considered to be a science of individual conduct it is now generally conceived as being essentially a social science. The moral and the social are indeed not clearly separable, but we may consider the moral to be the ideal aspect of the social.
This view of morality, which, for the most part, is indorsed by modern thought, makes ethics dependent upon sociology for its criteria of rightness or wrongness. Indeed, we cannot argue any moral question nowadays unless we argue it in social terms. If we discuss the rightness or wrongness of the drink habit we try to show its social consequences. So, too, if we discuss the rightness or wrongness of such an institution as polygamy we find ourselves forced to do so mainly in social terms. This is not denying, of course, that there are religious and metaphysical aspects to morality,—these are not necessarily in conflict with the social aspects,—but it is saying that modern ethical theory is coming more and more to base itself upon the study of the remote social consequences of conduct, and that we cannot judge what is right or wrong in our complex society unless we know something of the social consequences.
Ethics must be regarded, therefore, as a normative science to which sociology and the other social sciences lead up. It is, indeed, very difficult to separate ethics from sociology. It is the business of sociology to furnish norms and standards to ethics, and it is the business of ethics as a science to take the norms and standards furnished by the social sciences, to develop them, and to criticize them. This text therefore, will not attempt to exclude ethical implications and judgments from sociological discussions, because that would be futile and childish.
(F) Relations to Education. Among the applied sciences, sociology is especially closely related to education, for education is not simply the art of developing the powers and capacities of the individual; it is rather the fitting of individuals for efficient membership, for proper functioning, in social life. On its individual side, education should initiate the individual into the social life and fit him for social service. It should create the good citizen. On the social or public side, education should be the chief means of social progress. It should regenerate society, by fitting the individual for a higher type of social life than at present achieved. We must have a socialized education if our present complex civilization is to endure. Social problems touch education on every side, and, on the other hand, education must bear upon every social problem. It is evident, therefore, that sociology has a very great bearing upon the problems of education; and the teacher who comes to his task equipped with a knowledge of social conditions and of the laws and principles of social organization and evolution will find a significance and meaning in his work which he could hardly otherwise find.
(G) Relations to Philanthropy.[Footnote: This topic is more fully discussed in my article on "Philanthropy and Sociology" in The Survey for June 4, 1910.] The great science which deals directly with the depressed classes in society and with their uplift may be called the science of philanthropy. It may be regarded as an applied department of sociology. The science of philanthropy is especially concerned with the prevention, as well as with the curative treatment, of dependency, defectiveness, and delinquency. That part which deals with the social treatment of the criminal class is generally called penology, while the subdivision which treats of dependents and defectives is generally known as "charities" or "charitology."
It is evident that there are very close relations between the science of philanthropy and sociology. The elimination of hereditary defects, the overcoming of the social maladjustment of individuals, and the correction of defective social conditions, the three great tasks of scientific philanthropy, all require great knowledge of human society. The social or philanthropic worker, therefore, requires thorough equipment in sociology that he may approach his tasks aright.
The Relation of Sociology to Socialism.—Curiously enough sociology is often confused with socialism by those who pay but little attention to scientific matters. This comes from the fact that some of the adherents of socialism claim that socialism is a science. As a matter of fact, socialism is primarily a party program. It is the platform of a social and political party that has as the main tenet of its creed the abolition of private property in the means of production. Socialism, in other words, is a scheme to revolutionize the present order of society. It cannot claim to be a science in any sense, though it may rest upon theories which its adherents believe to be scientific. Sociology, on the other hand, is a science, and is concerned not with revolutionizing the social order, but with studying and understanding social conditions, especially the more fundamental conditions upon which social organization and social changes depend. As a science it aims simply at understanding society, at getting at the truth. It is no more related logically to socialism than to the platform of the Republican or the Democratic party.
The theories upon which revolutionary socialism rest may be proved or disproved by scientific sociology. It is perhaps too early to say finally whether sociology will pronounce the theoretical assumptions of socialism correct or incorrect; but so far as we can see it seems probable that the theories of social evolution advocated by the Marxian socialists at least will be pronounced erroneous. In any case, there is no logical connection between sociology as a science and socialism as a program for social reconstruction.
Nevertheless, there has been a close connection between sociology and socialism historically. It has been largely the agitations of the socialists and other radical social reformers which have called attention to the need of a scientific understanding of human society. The socialists and other radical reformers, in other words, have very largely set the problem which sociology attempts to solve. Practically, moreover, the indictments and charges of the socialists and anarchists against the present social order have made necessary some study of that order to see whether these charges were well founded or not. In this sense sociology may be said to be a scientific answer to socialism, not in the sense that sociology is devoted to refuting socialism, but in the sense that sociology has been devoted very largely to inquiring into many of the theoretical assumptions which revolutionary socialism makes.
The further relations of sociology to socialism will be taken up later. Here we are only concerned to have the reader see that there is a sharp distinction between the sociological movement on the one hand, that is, the movement to obtain fuller and more accurate knowledge concerning human social life, and the socialist movement, the movement to revolutionize the present social and economic order. Moreover, it may be remarked that while socialism seems to be mainly an economic program, it involves such total and radical reconstruction of social organization that in the long run the claims of socialism to a scientific validity must be passed upon by sociology rather than by economics.
The Relation of Sociology to Social Reform.—From what has been said it is also evident that sociology must not be confused with any particular social reform movement or with the movement for social reform in general. Sociology, as a science, cannot afford to be developed in the interest of any social reform. Certain social reforms, sociology may give its approval to; others it may designate as unwise; but this approval or disapproval will be simply incidental to its discovery of the full truth about human social relations. This is not saying, of course, that social theory should be divorced from social practice, or that the knowledge which sociology and the other social sciences offer concerning human society has no practical bearing upon present social conditions. On the contrary, while all science aims abstractly at the truth, all science is practical also in a deeper sense. No science would ever have been developed if it were not conceived that the knowledge which it discovers will ultimately be of benefit to man. All science exists, therefore, to benefit man, to enable him to master his environment, and the social sciences not less than the other sciences. The physical sciences have already enabled man to attain to a considerable mastery over his physical environment. When the social sciences have been developed it is safe to say that they will enable man not less to master his social environment. Therefore, while sociology and the special social sciences present as yet no program for action, aiming simply at the discovery of the abstract truth, they will undoubtedly in time bring about vast changes for the betterment of social conditions.
SELECT REFERENCES
For Brief Reading:
WARD, Outlines of Sociology, Chaps. I-VIII.
ROSS, The foundations of Sociology, Chaps. I and II.
DEALEY, Sociology, Its simpler Teachings and Applications, Chap. I.
For More Extended Reading:
GIDDINGS, The Principles of Sociology, 3d edition.
SMALL, General Sociology.
SPENCER, The Study of Sociology.
STUCKENBERG, Sociology: The Science of Human Society.
WARD, Pure Sociology.
American Journal of Sociology, many articles.
For a fairly extensive bibliography on sociology, consult Howard's
General Sociology: An Analytical Reference Syllabus.
CHAPTER II
THE BEARING OF THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION UPON SOCIAL PROBLEMS
Since Darwin wrote his Origin of Species all the sciences in any way connected with biology have been profoundly influenced by his theory of evolution. It is important that the student of sociology, therefore, should understand at the outset something of the bearing of Darwin's theory upon social problems.
We may note at the beginning, however, that the word evolution has two distinct, though related, meanings. First, it usually means Darwin's doctrine of descent; secondly, it is used to designate Spencer's theory of universal evolution. Let us note somewhat in detail what evolution means in the first of these senses.
The Darwinian Theory of Descent.—Darwin's theory of descent is the doctrine that all forms of life now existing or that have existed upon the earth have sprung from a few simple primitive types. According to this theory all forms of animals and plants have sprung from a few primitive stocks, though not necessarily one, because even in the beginning there may have existed a distinction at least between the plant and the animal types. So far as the animal world is concerned, then, this theory amounts to the assertion of the kinship of all life. From one or more simple primitive unicellular forms have arisen the great multitude of multicellular forms that now exist. Popularly, Darwin's theory is supposed to be that man sprang from the apes, but this, strictly speaking, is a misconception. Darwin's theory necessitates the belief, not that man sprang from any existing species of ape, but rather that the apes and man have sprung from some common stock. It is equally true, however, that man and many other of the lower animals, according to this theory, have come from a common stock. As was said above, the theory is not a theory of the descent of man from any particular animal type, but rather the theory of the kinship, the genetic relationship, of all animal species.
It is evident that if we assume Darwin's theory of descent in sociology we must look for the beginnings of many peculiarly human things in the animal world below man. Human institutions, according to this theory, could not be supposed to have an independent origin, or human society in any of its forms to be a fact by itself, but rather all human things are connected with the whole world of animal life below man. Thus if we are, according to this theory, to look for the origin of the family, we should have to turn first of all to the habits of animals nearest man. This is only one of the many bearings which Darwin's theory has upon the study of social problems; but it is evident even from this that it revolutionizes sociology. So long as it was possible to look upon human society as a distinct creation, as something isolated, by itself in nature, it was possible to hold to intellectualistic views of the origin of human institutions.
But some one may ask: Why should the sociologist accept Darwin's theory? What proofs does it rest upon? What warrant has a student of sociology for accepting a doctrine of such far-reaching consequences? The reply is, that biologists, generally, during the last fifty years, after a careful study of Darwin's arguments and after a careful examination of all other evidence, have come substantially to agree with him. There is no great biologist now living who does not accept the essentials of the doctrine of descent. Five lines of proof may be offered in support of Darwin's theories, and it may be well for us, as students of sociology, briefly to review these.
(1) The homologies or similarities of structure of different animals. There are very striking similarities of structure between all the higher animals. Between the ape and man, for example, there are over one hundred and fifty such anatomical homologies; that is, in the ape we find bone for bone, and muscle for muscle, corresponding to the structure of the human body. Even an animal so remotely related to man as the cat has many more resemblances to man in anatomical structure than dissimilarities. Now, the meaning of these anatomical homologies, biologists say, is that these animals are genetically related, that is, they had a common ancestry at some remote period in the past.
(2) The presence of vestigial organs in the higher animals supplies another argument for the belief in common descent. In man, for example, there exist over one hundred of these vestigial or rudimentary organs, as the vermiform appendix, the pineal gland, and the like. Many of these vestigal organs, which are now functionless in man, perform functions in lower animals, and this is held to show that at some remote period in the past they also functioned in man's ancestors.
(3) The facts of embryology seem to point to the descent of the higher types of animals from the lower types. The embryo or fetus in its development seems to recapitulate the various stages through which the species has passed. Thus the human embryo at one stage of its development resembles the fish; at another stage, the embryo of a dog; and for a long time it is impossible to distinguish between the human embryo and that of one of the larger apes. These embryological facts, biologists say, indicate genetic relation between the various animal forms which the embryo in its different stages simulates.
(4) The fossil remains of extinct species of animals are found in the earth's crust which are evidently ancestors of existing species. Until the doctrine of descent was accepted there was no way of explaining the presence of these fossil remains of extinct animals in the earth's crust. It was supposed by some that the earth had passed through a series of cataclysms in which all forms of life upon the earth had been many times destroyed and many times re-created. It is now demonstrated, however, that these fossils are related to existing species, and sometimes it is possible to trace back the evolution of existing forms to very primitive forms in this way. For example, it is possible to trace the horse, which is now an animal with a single hoof, walking on a single toe, back to an animal that walked upon four toes and had four hoofs and was not much larger than a fox. It is not so generally known that it is also possible to trace man back through fossil human remains that have been discovered in the earth's crust to the time when he is apparently just emerging from some apelike form. The latest discovery of the fossil remains of man made by Dr. Dubois in Java in 1894 shows a creature with about half the brain capacity of the existing civilized man and with many apelike characteristics. Thus we cannot except even man from the theory of evolution and suppose that he was especially created, as Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin's contemporary and colaborer, and others, have supposed.
(5) The last line of argument in favor of the belief that all existing species have descended from a few simple primitive forms is found in the fact of the variation of animals through artificial selection under domestication. For generations breeders have known that by carefully selecting the type of animal or plant which they have desired, it is possible to produce approximately that type. Thus have originated all the breeds or varieties of domestic plants and animals. Now, Darwin conceived that nature also exercises a selection by weeding out those individuals that are not adapted to their environment. In other words, nature, though unconscious, selects in a negative way the stronger and the better adapted. Animals vary in nature as well as under domestication from causes not yet well understood. The variations that were favorable to survival, Darwin argued, would secure the survival, through the passing on of these variations by heredity of the better adapted types of plants and animals. The natural process of weeding out the inferior or least adapted through early death, or through failure to reproduce, Darwin called "natural selection", and likened it in its effect upon organisms to the artificial selection which breeders consciously use to secure types of plants or animals that they desire. The only great addition to Darwin's theories which has been made since he wrote is that of the Dutch botanist, Hugo de Vries, who has shown that the variations which are fruitful for the production of new species are probably great or discontinuous variations, which he terms "mutations," instead of the small fluctuating variations which Darwin thought were probably most important in the production of new species. De Vries' theory in no way affects the doctrine of descent, nor does it take away from the importance of natural selection in fixing the variations. Darwin's theory, therefore, stands in all of its essentials to-day unquestioned by men of science, and it must be assumed by the student of sociology in any attempt to explain social evolution.
Spencer's Theory of Universal Evolution.—A second meaning given to the word evolution is that which Spencer popularized in his First Principles. This is a philosophical theory of the universe which asserts that not only have species of animals come to be what they are through a process of development, but everything whatsoever that exists, from molecules of matter to stars and planets. It is the view that the universe is in a process of development. Evolution in this wider sense includes all existing things whatsoever, while evolution in the sense of Darwin's theory is confined to the organic world. While the theory that all things existing have through a process of orderly change come to be what they are, is a very old one, yet it was undoubtedly Spencer's writings which popularized the theory, and to Spencer we also owe the attempt in his Synthetic Philosophy to trace the working of evolution in all the different realms of phenomena. The belief in universal evolution which Spencer popularized has also come to be generally accepted by scientific and philosophical thinkers. While Spencer's particular theories of evolution may not be accepted, some form of universal evolution is very generally believed in. The thought of evolution now dominates all the sciences,—physical, biological, psychological, and sociological. It is evident that the student of society, if he accepts fully the modern scientific spirit, must also assume evolution in this second or universal sense.
The Different Phases of Universal Evolution.—It may be well, in order to correlate our knowledge of social evolution with knowledge in general, to note the different well-marked phases of universal evolution.
(1) Cosmic Evolution. This is the phase the astronomer and the geologist are particularly interested in. It deals with the evolution of worlds. In this phase we are dealing merely with physical matter, and it is supposed that the active principle which works in this phase of evolution is the attraction of particles of matter for one another. This leads to the condensation of matter into suns and their planets, and the geological evolution of the earth, for example. Laplace's nebular hypothesis is an attempt to give an adequate statement of the cosmic phase of evolution. While this hypothesis has been much criticized of late, in its essentials it seems to stand. We are not, however, as students of society, concerned with this phase of evolution.
(2) Organic Evolution. This is the phase of evolution with which Darwin dealt and which biology, as a science of evolution of living forms, deals with. The great merit of Darwin's work was that he showed that the active principle in this phase of evolution is natural selection; that is, the extermination of the unadapted through death or through failure to reproduce. Types unsuited to their environment thus die before reproduction. The stronger and better fitted survive, and thus the type is raised. Natural selection may be regarded, then, as essentially the creative force in this phase of evolution.
(3) The Evolution of Mind. This might be included in organic evolution, but all organisms do not apparently have minds. It is evident that among animals those that would stand the best chance of surviving would not be simply those that have the strongest brute strength, but rather those that have the keenest intelligence and that could adapt themselves quickly to their environment, that could see approaching danger and escape it. Natural selection has, therefore, favored in the animal world the survival of those animals with the highest type of intelligence. It cannot be said, however, that natural selection is the only force which has created the mind in all its various expressions.
(4) Social Evolution. By social evolution we mean the evolution of groups, or, in strict accordance with our definition of society, groups of psychically interconnected individuals. Groups are to be found throughout the animal world, and it is in the human species, as we have already seen, that the highest types of association are found. This is not an accident. Association, or living together in groups, has been one of the devices by which animal species have been enabled to survive. It is evident that not only would intelligence help an animal to survive more than brute strength, but that ability to cooperate with one's fellows would also help in the same way. Consequently we find a degree of combination or coöperation almost at the very beginning of life, and it is without doubt through coöperation that man has become the dominant and supreme species upon the planet. Man's social instincts, in other words, have been perhaps even more important for his survival than his intelligence. The man who lies, cheats, and steals, or who indulges in other unsocial conduct sets himself against his group and places his group at a disadvantage as compared with other groups. Now, natural selection is continually operating upon groups as well as upon individuals, and the group which can command the most loyal, most efficient membership, and has the best organization, is, other things being equal, the group which survives. Natural selection is, then, active in social evolution as well as in general organic evolution. But the distinctive principle of social evolution is coöperation. In other words, it is sympathetic feeling, altruism, which has made the higher types of social evolution possible.
While the same factors are at work in the higher phases of evolution which are at work in the lower phases, yet it is evident that the higher phases have new and distinct factors. Sociology, being especially concerned with social evolution, has a new and distinct factor at work which we may call association, coöperation, or combination, and this it is which gives sociology its distinct place in the list of general sciences.
Factors In Organic Evolution.—As has already been said, the factors which are at work in organic evolution generally are also at work in social evolution. We need, therefore, to note these factors carefully and to see how they are at work in human society as well as in the animal world below man. While these factors are not all of the factors which are at work in social evolution, still they are the primitive factors, and are, therefore, of fundamental importance. Let us see what these factors are.
(1) The Multiplication of Organisms in Some Geometric Ratio through Reproduction. It is a law of life that every species must increase so that the number of offspring exceeds the number of parents if the species is to survive. If the offspring only equal in number the parents, some of them will die before maturity is reached or will fail to reproduce, and so the species will gradually become extinct. Every species normally increases, therefore, in some geometric ratio. Now, this tendency to reproduce in some geometric ratio, which characterizes all living organisms, means that any species, if left to itself, would soon reach such numbers as to occupy the whole earth. Darwin showed, for example, that though the elephant is the slowest breeding of all animals, if every elephant lived its normal length of life (one hundred years) and to every pair were born six offspring, then, at the end of seven hundred years there would be nineteen million living elephants descended from a single pair. This illustration shows the enormous possibilities of any species reproducing in geometric ratio, as all species in order to survive must do.
That this tendency to increase in some geometric ratio applies also to man is evident from all of the facts which we know concerning human populations. It is not infrequent for a people to double its numbers every twenty-five years. If this were continued for any length of time, it is evident that a single nation could soon populate the whole earth.
(2) Heredity. Heredity in organic evolution secures a continuity of the species or racial type. By heredity is meant the resemblance between parent and offspring. It is the law that like begets like. Offspring born of a species belong to that species, and usually resemble their parents more closely even than other members of the species.
It is evident that heredity is at work also in human society as well as in the animal world. We do not expect that the children born of parents of one race, for example, will belong to another race. Racial heredity is one of the most significant facts of human society, and even family heredity counts in its influence far more than some have supposed.
(3) Variation. This factor in organic evolution means that no two individuals, even though born of the same parents, are exactly like each other. Neither are they of a type exactly between their two parents, as theoretically they should be, since inheritance is equal from both parents. Every new individual born in the organic world, while it resembles its parents and belongs to its species or race, varies within certain limits. This variation so runs through organic nature that we are told that there are no two leaves on a single tree exactly alike. The result of this variation, the causes of which are not yet well understood, is that some individuals vary in favorable directions, others in unfavorable directions. Some are born strong, some weak; some inferior, some superior.
It is evident that variation characterizes the human species quite as much as other species, and indeed the limits of variation are wider, probably, in the human species than in any other species. Man is the most variable of all animals, and human individuality and personality owe not a little of their distinctiveness to this fact.
(4) The Struggle for Existence. Individuals in all species, as we have seen, are born in larger numbers than is necessary. The result is that a competition is entered into between species and individuals within the species for place and for existence. This competition or struggle results in the dying out of the inferior, that is, of those who are not adapted to their environment. The gradual dying out of the inferior or unadapted through competition results in the survival of the superior or better adapted, and ultimately in the survival of the fittest or those most adapted. Thus the type is raised, and we have evolution through natural selection, that is, through the elimination of the unfit.
Some have thought that this struggle for existence which is so evident in the animal world does not take place in human society. This, however, is a mistake. The struggle for existence in human society is not an unmitigated one, as it seems to be very often in the animal world, but it is nevertheless a struggle which has the same consequences. In the human world the competition, except in the lower classes, is not so much for food, as it is for position and for supremacy. But this struggle for place and power results in human society in the weak and inferior going to the wall, and therefore ultimately in their elimination. In all essential respects, then, the struggle for existence goes on in human society as it does in the animal world. This means that in society, as in the animal world, progress comes primarily through the elimination of unfit individuals. The unfit in human society, as we shall see, are especially those who cannot adapt themselves to their social environment. Progress in society, in a certain sense, waits upon death, as it does in all the rest of the animal world. Death is the means by which the stream of life is purged from its inferior and unfit elements.
(5) Another Factor in Organic Evolution is Coöperation, or altruism, as we have already called it. As Henry Drummond has said, this is the struggle not for one's own life but for the lives of others. Really, however, it is a device which enables a group of individuals to struggle more successfully with the adverse factors in their environment. Something of coöperation,—that is, a group of individuals carrying on a common life,—is found almost at the beginning of life, and, as we rise in the scale of animal creation, the amount of coöperation and of altruistic feelings which accompany it very greatly increases. Perhaps the chief source of this coöperation is to be found in the rearing of offspring. The family group, even in the lower animals, seems to be the chief source of altruism. At any rate, sympathetic or altruistic instincts grow up in all animals, probably chiefly through the necessities of reproduction.
It is only in human social life that coöperation, or altruism, attains its full development. Human society is characterized by the protection it affords to its weaker members, and in human society the natural process of eliminating the inferior often seems reversed. As Huxley has pointed out, human society tries to fit as many as possible to survive, and we may add, not only to survive, but to live well. Altruism and its resulting coöperation have come especially to characterize human social evolution. To some extent this is due, no doubt, to the necessities of group survival; for only that nation, for example, can survive that can maintain the most loyal citizenship, the best institutions, and the largest spirit of self-sacrifice in its members. Human social groups, therefore, try to fit as many individuals as possible for the most efficient membership, and this necessitates caring for the temporarily weak, and also for the permanently incapacitated, in order that the sentiments of social solidarity may be strengthened to their utmost.
It is evident, then, that all the factors at work in organic evolution are at work also in social evolution, though in some part modified and varying in degree. The struggle for existence in human society, for example, has been greatly modified from the condition in the early animal world, while coöperation, or altruism, is much more highly developed. Nevertheless, these factors of organic evolution are at work in social evolution and must be taken into full account by the student of social problems. Social evolution rests upon organic evolution.
Some Effects upon Industry.—These factors in organic evolution express themselves more or less in the industrial phase of human society. Thus, the first factor, the multiplication of organisms through reproduction in some geometric ratio, was first studied by Malthus, an economist in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and exclusively with reference to its effect upon economic conditions. Malthus perceived the tendency for human beings to multiply in some geometric ratio where food supply was sufficiently abundant, and argued from this that if better wages, and so a larger food supply, were given the lower classes, they would multiply so much more rapidly that worse poverty would result than before. There is no doubt that in certain classes of human society there is a tendency for population to press against food supply, and it is in these classes that the struggle for existence takes on its most animal-like forms.
Again, the struggle for existence is continually illustrated in the world of human industry. Not only do individuals lose place and power because they are unadapted to their environment, but also economic groups, such as corporations, show the natural competition or struggle for existence sometimes in its most intense form. The result in all cases is the dying out of the least adapted and the survival of the better adapted. Thus, through competition and the survival of the better adapted we secure in industry the evolution of higher types of industrial organization, industrial methods, and the like, just as higher types are secured in the same way in the animal world. Again, in economic matters, as in other social affairs, coöperation continually comes in to modify competition and to lift it to a higher plane. Just as the higher type of societies has been characterized by higher types of coöperation, so it is safe to say that the higher types of industry are characterized by higher types of coöperation. And while, as we shall see later, coöperation can never displace competition in industry any more than elsewhere in life, yet increasing coöperation characterizes the higher types of industry as well as the higher types of society.
A word of caution is perhaps necessary against confusing the economic struggle as it exists in modern society with the natural struggle under primitive conditions. It is evident that in present society the economic struggle has been greatly changed in character from the primitive struggle, and therefore can no longer have the same results. Laws of inheritance, of taxation, and many other artificial economic conditions, have greatly interfered with the natural struggle. The rich and economically successful are therefore by no means to be confused with the biologically fit. On the contrary, many of the economically successful are such simply through artificial advantageous circumstances, and from the standpoint of biology and sociology they are often among the less fit, rather than the more fit, elements of society.
A Brief Survey of Social Evolution from the Biological Standpoint.—In order to sum up and make clear some of the principal applications to social evolution of the biological principles just stated we shall endeavor to state in a brief way some of the salient features of social evolution from the biological standpoint.
From the very beginning there has been no such thing as unmitigated individual struggle among animals. Nowhere in nature does pure individualism exist in the sense that the individual animal struggles alone, except perhaps in a few solitary species which are apparently on the way to extinction. The assumption of such a primitive individual struggle has been at the bottom of many erroneous views of human society. The primary conflict is between species. A secondary conflict, however, is always found between the members of the same species. Usually this conflict within the species is a competition between groups. The human species exactly illustrates these statements. Primitively its great conflict was with other species of animals. The supremacy of man over the rest of the animal world was won only after an age-long conflict between man and his animal rivals. While this conflict went on there was apparently but little struggle within the species itself. The lowest groups of which we have knowledge, while continually struggling against nature, are rarely at war with one another. But after man had won his supremacy and the population of groups came to increase so as to encroach seriously upon food supply, and even on territorial limits of space, then a conflict between human groups, which we call war, broke out and became almost second nature to man. It needs to be emphasized, however, that the most primitive groups are not warlike, but only those that have achieved their supremacy over nature and attained considerable size. In other words, the struggle between groups which we call war was occasioned very largely by numbers and food supply. To this extent at least war primitively arose from economic conditions, and it is remarkable how economic conditions have been instrumental in bringing about all the great wars of recorded human history.
The conflict among human groups, which we call war, has had an immense effect upon human social evolution. Five chief effects must be noted.
(1) Intergroup struggle gave rise to higher forms of social organization, because only those groups could succeed in competition with other groups that were well organized, and especially only those that had competent leadership.
(2) Government, as we understand the word, was very largely an outcome of the necessities of this intergroup struggle, or war. As we have already seen, the groups that were best organized, that had the most competent leadership, would stand the best chance of surviving. Consequently the war leader or chief soon came, through habit, to be looked upon as the head of the group in all matters. Moreover, the exigencies and stresses of war frequently necessitated giving the war chief supreme authority in times of danger, and from this, without doubt, arose despotism in all of its forms. The most primitive tribes are republican or democratic in their form of government, but it has been found that despotic forms of government rapidly take the place of the primitive democratic type, where a people are continually at war with other peoples.
(3) A third result of war in primitive times was the creation of social classes. After a certain stage was reached groups tried not so much to exterminate one another as to conquer and absorb one another. This was, of course, after agriculture had been developed and slave labor had reached a considerable value. Under such circumstances a conquered group would be incorporated by the conquerors as a slave or subject class. Later, this enslaved class may have become partially free as compared with some more recently subjugated or enslaved classes, and several classes in this way could emerge in a group through war or conquest. Moreover, the presence of these alien and subject elements in a group necessitated a stronger and more centralized government to keep them in control, and this was again one way in which war favored a development of despotic governments. Later, of course, economic conditions gave rise to classes, and to certain struggles between the classes composing a people.
(4) Not only was social and political organization and the evolution of classes favored by intergroup struggle, but also the evolution of morality. The group that could be most efficiently organized would be, other things being equal, the group which had the most loyal and most self-sacrificing membership. The group that lacked a group spirit, that is, strong sentiments of solidarity and harmonious relations between its members, would be the group that would be apt to lose in conflict with other groups, and so its type would tend to be eliminated. Consequently in all human groups we find recognition of certain standards of conduct which are binding as between members of the same group. For example, while a savage might incur no odium through killing a member of another group, he was almost always certain to incur either death or exile through killing a member of his own group. Hence arose a group code of ethics founded very largely upon the conceptions of kinship or blood relationship, which bound all members of a primitive group to one another.
(5) A final consequence of war among human groups has been the absorption of weaker groups and the growth of larger and larger political groups, until in modern times a few great nations dominate the population of the whole world. That this was not the primitive condition, we know from human history and from other facts which indicate the disappearance of a vast number of human groups in the past. The earth is a burial ground of tribes and natrons as well as of individuals. In the competition between human groups, only a few that have had efficient organization and government, loyal membership and high standards of conduct within the group, have survived. The number of peoples that have perished in the past is impossible to estimate. But we can get some inkling of the number by the fact that philologists estimate that for every living language there are twenty dead languages. When we remember that a language not infrequently stands for several groups with related cultures, we can guess the immense number of human societies that have perished in the past in this intergroup competition.
Even though war passes away entirely, nations can never escape this competition with one another. While the competition may not be upon the low and brutal plane of war, it will certainly go on upon the higher plane of commerce and industry, and will probably be on this higher plane quite as decisive in the life of peoples in future as war was in the past.
While the primary struggle within the human species has been in the historic period between nations and races, this is not saying, of course, that struggle and competition have not gone on within these larger groups. On the contrary, as has already been implied, a continual struggle has gone on between classes, first perhaps of racial origin, and later of economic origin. Also there is within the nation a struggle between parties and sects, and sometimes between "sections" and communities. Usually, however, the struggle within the nation is a peaceful one and does not come to bloodshed.
Again, within each of these minor groups that we have mentioned struggle and competition in some modified form goes on between its members. Thus within a party or class there is apt to be a struggle or competition between factions. There is, indeed, no human group that is free from struggle or competition between its members, unless it be the family. The family seems to be so constituted that normally there is no competition between its members,—at least, there is good ground tor believing that competition between the members of a family is to be considered exceptional, or even abnormal.
From what has been said it is evident that competition and coöperation are twin principles in the evolution of social groups. While competition characterizes in the main the relation between groups, especially independent political groups, and while coöperation characterizes in the main the relation of the members of a given group to one another, still competition and coöperation are correlatives in practically every phase of the social life. Some degree of competition, for example, has to be maintained by every group between its members if it is going to maintain high standards of efficiency or of loyalty. If there were no competition with respect to the matters that concern the inner life of groups, it is evident that the groups would soon lose efficiency in leadership and in membership and would sooner or later be eliminated. Consequently society, from certain points of view, presents itself to the student at the present time as a vast competition, while from other standpoints it presents itself as a vast coöperation.
It follows from this that competition and coöperation are both equally important in the life of society. It has been a favorite idea that competition among human beings should be done away with, and that coöperation should be substituted to take its place entirely. It is evident, however, that this idea is impossible of realization. If a social group were to check all competition between its members, it would stop thereby the process of natural selection or of the elimination of the unfit, and, as a consequence, would soon cease to progress. If some scheme of artificial selection were substituted to take the place of natural selection, it is evident that competition would still have to be retained to determine who were the fittest. A society that would give positions of trust and responsibility to individuals without imposing some competitive test upon them would be like a ship built partially of good and partially of rotten wood,—it would soon go to pieces.
This leads us to emphasize the continued necessity of selection in society. No doubt natural selection is often a brutal and wasteful means of eliminating the weak in human societies, and no doubt human reason might devise superior means of bringing about the selection of individuals which society must maintain. To some extent it has done this through systems of education and the like, which are, in the main, selective processes for picking out the most competent individuals to perform certain social functions. But the natural competition, or struggle between individuals, has not been done away with, especially in economic matters, and it is evidently impossible to do away with it until some vast scheme of artificial selection can take its place. Such a scheme is so far in the future that it is hardly worth talking about. The best that society can apparently do at the present time is to regulate the natural competition between individuals, and this it is doing increasingly.
What people rightfully object to is, not competition, but unregulated or unfair competition. In the interest of solidarity, that is, in the interest of the life of the group as a whole, all forms of competition in human society should be so regulated that the rules governing the competition may be known and the competition itself public. It is evident that in politics and in business we are very far from this ideal as yet, although society is unquestionably moving toward it.
A word in conclusion about the nature of moral codes and standards from the social point of view. It is evident that moral codes from the social point of view are simply formulations of standards of conduct which groups find it convenient or necessary to impose upon their members. Even morality, in an idealistic sense, seems from a sociological standpoint to be those forms of conduct which conduce to social harmony, to social efficiency, and so to the survival of the group. Groups, however, as we have already pointed out, cannot do as they please. They are always hard-pressed in competition by other groups and have to meet the standards of efficiency which nature imposes. Morality, therefore, is not anything arbitrarily designed by the group, but is a standard of conduct which necessities of social survival require. In other words, the right, from the point of view of natural science, is that which ultimately conduces to survival, not of the individual, but of the group or of the species. This is looking at morality, of course, from the sociological point of view, and in no way denies the religious and metaphysical view of morality, which may be equally valid from a different standpoint.
Finally, we need to note that natural selection does not necessitate in any mechanical sense certain conduct on the part of individuals or groups. Rather, natural selection marks the limits of variation which nature permits, and within those limits of variation there is a large amount of freedom of choice, both to individuals and to groups. Human societies, therefore, may be conceivably free to take one of several paths of development at any particular point. But in the long run they must conform to the ultimate conditions of survival; and this probably means that the goal of their evolution is largely fixed for them. Human groups are free only in the sense that they may go either backward or forward on the path which the conditions of survival mark out for them. They are free to progress or to perish. But social evolution in any case, in the sense of social change either toward higher or toward lower social adaptation, is a necessity that cannot be escaped. Sociology and all social science is, therefore, a study not of what human groups would like to do, but of what they must do in order to survive, that is, how they can control their environment by utilizing the laws which govern universal evolution.
From this brief and most elementary consideration of the bearings of evolutionary theory upon social problems it is evident that evolution, in the sense of what we know about the development of life and society in the past, must be the guidepost of the sociologist. Human social evolution, we repeat, rests upon and is conditioned by biological evolution at every point. There is, therefore, scarcely any sanity in sociology without the biological point of view.
SELECT REFERENCES
For brief reading:
FAIRBANKS, Introduction to Sociology, Chaps. XIV.-XV.
JORDAN, Foot-Notes to Evolution, Chaps. I.-III.
ELY, Evolution of Industrial Society. Part II, Chaps. I.-III.
For more extended reading:
DARWIN, Descent of Man.
FISKE, Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy.
WALLACE, Darwinism.
On the religious aspects of evolution:
DRUMMOND, Ascent of Man.
FISKE, The Destiny of Man.
FISKE, Through Nature to God.
CHAPTER III
THE FUNCTION OF THE FAMILY IN SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
Instead of continuing the study of social evolution in general it will be best now, before we take up some of the problems of modern society, to study the evolution of some important social institution, because in so doing we can see more clearly the working of the biological and psychological forces which have brought about the evolution of human institutions. An institution, as has already been said, is a sanctioned grouping or relation in society. Now, there can be scarcely any doubt that the two most important institutions of human society are the family and property. In Western civilization these take the form of the monogamic family and of private property. It is upon these two institutions that our civilization rests. The state is a third very important institution in society, but it exists largely for the sake of protecting the family and property.
Of the two institutions, the family and property, the family is without doubt prior in time and more fundamental,—more important in human association. We shall, therefore, study very briefly the origin and development of the family as a human institution in order to illustrate some of the principles of social evolution in general. But before we can take up the question of the origin of the family it will be well for us to see just what the function of this institution is in the human society of the present, in order to justify the assertion just made that it is the most important and fundamental institution of humanity.
The Family the Primary Social Institution.—Let us note first of all that in society, as it exists at present, the family is the simplest group capable of maintaining itself. It is, therefore, we may say, the primary social structure. Because it contains both sexes and all ages it is capable of reproducing itself, and so of reproducing society. For the same reason it contains practically all social relations in miniature. It has therefore often been called, and rightly, "the social microcosm". The relations of superiority, subordination, and equality, which enter so largely into the structure of all social institutions, are especially clearly illustrated in the family in the relations of parents to children, of children to parents, of parents to each other, and of children to one another. Comte, for this reason, claimed that the family was the unit of social organization, not the individual. However this may be, it is evident that families do enter, as units, very largely into our social and industrial life. While the tendency may be to make the individual the unit of modern society, it is nevertheless true that the family remains the simplest social structure in society, and from it, in some sense, all other social relations whatsoever are evolved.
The Family Differs from All Other Social Institutions, however, in two respects: First, its members have their places fixed in the family group by their organic natures, that is, the relations of husband and wife, parent and child, rest upon biological differences and relations, so that one may say that the family is almost as much a biological structure as it is a social structure. This is not, to any extent, true of other institutions. Secondly, the family is not a product, so far as we can see, of other forms of association, but rather it itself produces these other forms of association. The family, in other words, is not a result of social organization in general, but seems rather to antedate both historically and logically the forms of social life. It is not a product of society, but it itself produces society.
THE PRIMARY FUNCTION OF THE FAMILY is continuing the life of the species; that is, the primary function of the family is reproduction in the sense of the birth and rearing of children. While other functions of the family have been delegated in a large measure to other social institutions, it is manifest that this function cannot be so delegated. At least we know of no human society in which the birth and rearing of children has not been the essential function of the family. From a sociological point of view the childless family is a failure. While the childless family may be of social utility to the individuals that form it, nevertheless from the point of view of society such a family has failed to perform its most important function and must be considered, therefore, socially a failure.
The Function of the Family in Conserving the Social Order.—The family is still the chief institution in society for transmitting from one generation to another social possessions of all sorts. Property in the form of land or houses or personal property, society permits the family to pass along from generation to generation. Thus, also, the material equipment for industry, that is capital, is so transmitted. While it is obvious that the material goods of society are thus transmitted by the family from one generation to another, it is perhaps not quite so obvious, but equally true, that the spiritual possessions of the race are also thus transmitted. For example, language is very largely transmitted in the family, and students tell us that each family has its own peculiar dialect. Literature, ideas, beliefs on government, law, religion, moral standards, artistic tastes and appreciation—all of these are still largely transmitted in society from one generation to another through the family. While public institutions, such as libraries, art galleries, universities, scientific museums, and the like, are often adopted to conserve and transmit these spiritual possessions of the race, yet it is safe to say that if it were possible for society to depend upon these institutions to transmit knowledge, artistic standards, and moral ideals, there would be great discontinuity in social life. The family has been in the past, and is still, the great conserving agency in human society, preserving and transmitting from generation to generation both the material and spiritual possessions of the race.
The Function of the Family in Social Progress.—While the conservative function of the family is very obvious, its function in furthering social progress is perhaps not so obvious. Nevertheless, this is one of the greatest functions of the family life, because the family is the chief or almost sole generator of altruism in human society, and it is upon altruism that society depends for every upward advance in coöperation. It is in the family that children learn to love and obey, to be of service, and to respect one another's rights. The amount of altruism in a given group has a very close relation to the quality of its family life. If the family fails to teach the spirit of service and self-sacrifice to its members, it is hardly probable that they will get very much of that spirit from society at large. The ideal of a human brotherhood has no meaning unless family affection gives it meaning. If the family is the chief generator of altruism in human society and if society depends upon altruism for each forward step in moral progress, then the family is the chief source of social progress.
What we have said is a brief presentation of the claims of the family in modern society to count not only as the primary but also as the most important human institution. The family, it is evident, is charged by society with the most important task, not only of producing the new individuals in society, but of training each individual as he comes on the stage of life, adjusting him to society in all of its aspects, such as industry, government, and religion. If the family fails to perform these important functions the chances are that unsocialized individuals will take important places in society, and this means ultimately social anarchy.
The Family Life may be regarded as a School for Socializing the Individual. We need not trace in detail how the family does this for the child. It is evident that the rudiments of morality, of government, of religion, and even of industry and knowledge, must be learned by the child in the family group. If the child fails, for example, to learn morality, to get moral standards and ideals from his family life, he stands but poor chance of getting them later in society. Again, if the child fails to learn what law is and to get proper ideals of the relation of the citizen to the state in his family life, there are good prospects of his being numbered among the lawless elements of society later. In the family, we repeat, the child first experiences all the essential relations of society, learns the meaning of authority, obedience, loyalty, and all the human virtues. Moreover, the family life furnishes the moral and religious concepts which human society has set before it as its goal. The ideal of human brotherhood, for example, is manifestly derived from the family life; so also the religious idea of the Divine Fatherhood. If a nation's family life fails to illustrate these concepts, it is safe to say that they will not have great influence in society generally. The nation whose family life decays, therefore, rots at the core, dries up the springs of all social and civic virtues.
The Family and Industry.—From what has been said in general terms it is evident that the family has a very important relation to the industrial activities of society, and industry a very important bearing upon the family. Primitively all industry centered in the family. Modern industry, as has been well said, is but an enormous expansion of primitive housekeeping; that is, the preparation of food and clothing and shelter by the primitive family group for its own existence is the germ out of which all modern industry has developed. The very word economics means the science or the art of the household.
In primitive communities and in newly settled districts the family often carries on all essential industrial activities. It produces all the raw material, manufactures the finished products, and consumes the same. But with the growth of complex societies there has come a great industrial division of labor, and the family has delegated industrial activity after activity to some other institution until at the present time the modern family performs scarcely any industrial activities, except the preparation of food for immediate consumption. Even this, however, in modern cities seems about to be delegated to some other institution.
All that need be said at present about the delegation of the industrial activities of the family to other industrial institutions is that the movement is not one which need cause any anxiety so long as it does not interfere with the essential function of the family, namely, the birth and rearing of children. Even though children can no longer learn the rudiments of industry in their home life, still it is possible through manual and industrial training in our public schools to teach all children this. And the removal of industries from the home, even such essential industries as the preparation of food, is to be regarded as a boon if it gives more time to the parents, especially to the mother, for the proper care and bringing up of their children.
But the removal of industries from the family group has not always had the beneficent effect of simply giving more time to the parents for the proper care of their children. On the contrary, the removal of these industries has often been followed by the removal of the parents themselves from the home and the practical disintegration of the family. This has been particularly the case where married women have gone into factories. Under such circumstances children have often been neglected, allowed to grow up on the streets, and to grow up as unsocialized individuals in general. It would seem that the labor of married women outside of the home should be forbidden by the state, except in certain instances, with a view to assuring to the state itself a better citizenship. The labor of children in factories and other industrial institutions has sprung very largely from the same general causes. While child labor may have the merit of giving the child some industrial training, still it has been shown that it dwarfs the child in body and mind, produces a one-sided development, fails to prepare for citizenship in the higher sense, and so must be regarded as altogether an evil. Even the labor of the young unmarried women in factories and shops, when they should be preparing for the duties of wifehood and motherhood, is to some extent an evil in society, though not by any means of the same proportions as the labor of married women.
The Subordination of Industry to the Family Life is necessary, therefore, from a social point of view. Industry, as we have seen, was primitively an adjunct of the family life, and all modern industry, if rightfully developed, should be but an adjunct to the family life. Industrial considerations must be, therefore, subordinate to domestic considerations, that is, to considerations of the welfare of parents and their children in the family group. One trouble with modern society is that industry has come to dominate as an independent interest that oftentimes does not recognize its reasonable and socially necessary subordination to the higher interests of society. There can be no sane and stable family life until we are willing to subordinate the requirements of industry, that is, of wealth-getting, to the requirements of the family for the good birth and proper rearing of children.
SELECT REFERENCES
For brief reading:
HENDERSON, Social Elements, Chap. IV.
DEWEY AND TUFTS, Ethics, Chap. XXVI.
ADLER, Marriage and Divorce, Lecture I.
For more extended reading:
BOSANQUET, The Family.
SALEEBY, Parenthood and Race Culture.
CHAPTER IV
THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY
We must understand the biological roots of the family before we can understand the family as an institution, and especially before we can understand its origin. Let us note, then, briefly the chief biological facts connected with the family life.
The Biological Foundations of the Family.—(1)The Family rests upon the Great Biological Fact of Sex. While sex does not characterize all animal forms, still it does characterize all except the simplest forms of animal life. These simplest forms multiply or reproduce by fission, but such asexual reproduction is almost entirely confined to the unicellular forms of life. It may be inferred, therefore, that the higher animal types could not have been evolved without sexual reproduction, and something of the meaning or significance of sex in the whole life process will, therefore, be helpful in understanding all of the higher forms of evolution. Biologists tell us that the meaning or purpose of sexual reproduction is to bring about greater organic variation. Now variation, as we have seen, is the raw material upon which natural selection acts to create the higher types. The immense superiority of sexual reproduction over asexual reproduction is due to the fact that it multiplies so greatly the elements of heredity in each new organism, for under sexual reproduction every new organism has two parents, four grandparents, and so on, each of which perhaps contributes something to its heredity. The biological meaning of sex, then, is that it is a device of nature to bring about organic variation. From the point of view of the social life we may note also that sex adds greatly to its variety, enriching it with numerous fruitful variations which undoubtedly further social evolution. The bareness and monotony of a social life without sex can readily be imagined.
While the differences between the sexes have been mainly elaborated through the differences of reproductive function, yet these differences have come to be fundamental to the whole nature of the organism. In the higher animals, therefore, the sexes differ profoundly in many ways from each other. Biologists tell us that the chief difference between the male and female organism is a difference in metabolism, that is, in the rapidity of organic change which goes on within the body. In the male metabolism is much more rapid than in the female; hence the male organism is said to be more katabolic. In the female the rapidity of organic change is less; hence the female is said to be more anabolic. Put in more familiar terms, the male tends to expend energy, is more active, hence also stronger; the female tends more to store up energy, is more passive, conservative, and weaker. These fundamental differences between the sexes express themselves in many ways in the social life. The differences between man and woman, therefore, are not to be thought of as due simply to social customs and usages, the different social environment of the two sexes, but are even more due to a radical and fundamental difference in their whole nature. The belief that the two sexes would become like each other in character if given the same environment is, therefore, erroneous. That these differences are original, or inborn, and not acquired, may be readily seen by observing children of different sex. Even from their earliest years boys are more active, restless, energetic, destructive, untidy, and disobedient, while little girls are quieter, less restless, less destructive, neater, more orderly, and more obedient. These different innate qualities fit the sexes naturally for different functions in human society, and there is, therefore, a natural division of labor between them from the first. Indeed, the division of labor between the two sexes may be said to be the fundamental division of labor in human society.
The causes which produce sex in the individual are not known to any extent and are probably beyond the control of man. In each species the relative number of the two sexes is fixed by nature, probably through some obscure working of natural selection, and in practically all of the higher species of animals, man included, the number of the two sexes is relatively equal. In human society much depends upon this relative numerical equality of the two sexes. Hence it can be readily seen that it is fortunate that man does not know how to control the sex of offspring, for if he did the numerical equality of the two sexes might be disturbed and serious social results would follow.
(2) The Influence of Parental Care. Sex alone could never have produced the family in the sense of a relatively permanent group of parents and offspring. We do not begin to find the family until we get to those higher types where we find some parental care. In the lowest types the relation between the sexes is momentary and the survival of offspring is secured simply through the production of enormous numbers. Thus the sturgeon, a low type of fish, produces between one and two million of eggs at a single spawning, from which it is estimated that not more than a dozen individuals survive till maturity is reached. Thus sexual reproduction of itself necessitates no parental care and in itself could give rise in no way to the family; but quite low in the scale of life we begin to find some parental care as a device to protect immature offspring and secure their survival without the expenditure of such an enormous amount of energy in mere physiological reproduction. Even among the fishes we find some that watch over the eggs after they are spawned and care for their young by leading them to suitable feeding grounds. In such cases a much smaller number of young need to be produced in order that a few may survive until maturity is reached. In the mammals the mother, obviously, must care for the young for some time, since mammals are animals that suckle their young. But this care of the young by a single parent only foreshadows the family as we understand it. Among the mammals it is not until we reach the higher types that we find care of offspring by both parents,—a practice, however, which is common among the birds. It is evident that as soon as both parents are concerned in the care of the offspring they have a much better chance of survival. Hence, natural selection favors the growth of this type of group life and develops powerful instincts to keep male and female together till after the birth and rearing of offspring. Such we find to be the condition among many of the higher mammals, such as some of the carnivora, and especially among the monkeys and apes and man.
If it is allowable at this point to generalize from the facts given, it must be said that the family life is essentially a device of nature for the preservation of offspring through a more or less prolonged infancy. The family group and the instincts upon which it rests were undoubtedly, therefore, instituted by natural selection. Summing up, we may say, then, the animal family group owes its existence, first, to the production of child or immature forms that need more or less prolonged care; secondly, to the prolongation of this period of immaturity in the higher animals, and especially in man; thirdly, to the development, parallel with these two causes, of parental instincts which keep male and female together for the care of the offspring. It is evident, then, that the family life rests, not upon sex attraction, but upon the fact of the child and the corresponding psychological fact of parental instinct. The family, then, has been created by the very conditions of life itself and is not a man-made institution.
The Origin of the Family in the Human Species.—Two great theories of the origin of the family in the human species have in the past been more or less accepted, and these we must now examine and criticize. First, the traditional theory that the human family life was from the beginning a pure monogamy. Secondly, the so-called evolutionary theory that the human family life arose from confused if not promiscuous sex relations. The first of these theories, favored both by the Bible and Aristotle, held undisputed sway down to the middle of the nineteenth century. Then, after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859, certain social theorists began to put forward the second theory in the name of evolution. In order that we may see precisely what the origin of the human family life was, and its primitive form, we must now proceed to criticize these two theories, especially the last, which is known as the hypothesis of a primitive state of promiscuity.
The Habits of the Higher Animals. We have already spoken of the origin of the family group in the animal world generally, but it must be admitted that there are some difficulties in arguing directly from the lower animals to man. Man is so separated from the lower animals through having passed through many higher stages of an independent evolution that in many respects his life is peculiar to itself. This is true especially of his family life. If we survey the whole range of animal life and then the whole range of human life, we find that there are but two or three striking similarities between the family life of man and that of the brutes, but a great many striking dissimilarities. The similarities may be summed up by saying that man exhibits in common with all the animals the phenomena of courtship, that is, of the male seeking to win the female, also the phenomenon of male jealousy, and we may perhaps add an instinctive aversion to crossing with the other species. These characteristics of his family life man shares with the brutes below him. There are, however, many things peculiar to the human family life that are found in no animal species below man. The most striking of these differences may be mentioned. (1) Man has no pairing season, as practically all other animals have. (2) The number of young born in the human species is on the whole much smaller than in any other animal species. (3) The dependence of offspring upon parents is far longer in the human species than in any other species. (4) Man has an antipathy to incest or close inbreeding which seems to be instinctive. This is not found clearly in any animal species below man. (5) There is a tendency among human beings to artificial adornment during the period of courtship, but not to natural ornament to any extent, as among many animal species. (6) The indorsement of society is almost invariably sought, both among uncivilized and civilized peoples, before the establishment of a new family—usually through the forms of a religious marriage ceremony. (7) Chastity in women, especially married women, is universally insisted upon, both among uncivilized and civilized peoples, as the basis of human family life. (8) There is a feeling of modesty or of shame as regards matters of sex among the human beings. (9) In humanity we find, besides animal lust, spiritual affection, or love, as a bond of union between the two sexes.
None of these peculiarities of human family life are found in the family life of any animal species below man. It might seem, therefore, that man's family life must be regarded as a special creation unconnected with the family life of the brutes below him. But this view is hardly probable, rather is impossible from the standpoint of evolution. We must say that these peculiarities of human family life are to be explained through the fact that man has passed through many more stages of evolution, particularly of intellectual evolution, than any of the animals below him. If we examine these peculiarities of man's family life carefully, we will see that they all can be explained through natural selection and man's higher intellectual development. That man has no pairing season, has fewer offspring born, and a longer period of dependence of the offspring upon parents, and the like, is directly to be explained through natural selection; while seeking the indorsement of society before forming a new family, sexual modesty, tendencies to artificial adornment, and the like, are to be explained through man's self-consciousness and higher intellectual development, also through the fuller development of his social instincts. The gap between the human family life and brute family life is, therefore, not an unbridgeable one.
That this is so, we see most clearly when we consider the family life of the anthropoid or manlike apes—man's nearest cousins in the animal world. All of these apes, of which the chief representatives are the gorilla, orangutan, and the chimpanzee, live in relatively permanent family groups, usually monogamous. These family groups are quite human in many of their characteristics, such as the care which the male parent gives to the mother and her offspring, and the seeming affection which exists between all members of the group. Such a group of parents and offspring among the higher apes is, moreover, a relatively permanent affair, children of different ages being frequently found along with their parents in such groups. So far as the evidence of animals next to man, therefore, goes, there is no reason for supposing that the human family life sprang from confused or promiscuous sex relations in which no permanent union between male and female parent existed. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe, as Westermarck says, that human family life is an inheritance from man's apelike progenitor.
The Evidence from the Lower Human Races.—The evidence afforded by the lowest peoples in point of culture even more clearly, if anything, refutes the hypothesis of a primitive state of promiscuity. The habits or customs of the lowest peoples were not well known previous to the nineteenth century. Therefore it was possible for such a theory as the patriarchal theory of the primitive family to remain generally accepted, as we have already said, down to the middle of the nineteenth century. This was the theory that the oldest or most primitive type of human family life is that depicted in the opening pages of the Book of Genesis, namely, a family life in which the father or eldest male of the family group is the absolute ruler of the group and practically owner of all persons and property. The belief that this was the primitive type of the human family life was first attacked by a German-Swiss philologist by the name of Bachofen in a work entitled Das Mutterrecht (The Matriarchate), published in 1861, in which he argued that antecedent to the patriarchal period was a matriarchal period, in which women were dominant socially and politically, and in which relationships were traced through mothers only. Bachofen got his evidence for this theory from certain ancient legends, such as that of the Amazons, and other remains in Greek and Roman literature, which seemed to point to a period antecedent to the patriarchal.
In 1876 Mr. J.F. McLennan, a Scotch lawyer, put forth, independently, practically the same theory, basing it upon certain legal survivals which he found among many peoples. With Bachofen, he argued that this matriarchal period must have been characterized by promiscuous relations of the sexes. In 1877 Mr. Lewis H. Morgan, an American ethnologist and sociologist, put forth again, independently, practically the same theory, basing it upon an extensive study of the North American Indian tribes. Morgan had lived among the Iroquois Indians for years and had mastered their system of relationship, which previously had puzzled the whites. He found that they traced relationship through mothers only, and not at all along the male line. This method of reckoning relationship, moreover, he found also characterized practically all of the North American Indian tribes, and he argued that the only explanation of it was that originally sexual relations were of such an unstable or promiscuous character that they would not permit of tracing descent through fathers.
From these theories sociological writers put forth the conclusion that the primitive state was one of promiscuity, or, as Sir John Lubbock called it in his Origin of Civilization, one of "communism in women." Post, a German student of comparative jurisprudence, for example, summed up the theory by saying that "monogamous marriage originally emerged everywhere from pure communism in women, through the intermediate stages of limited communism in women, polyandry, and polygyny." Even Herbert Spencer in his Principles of Sociology, while he avoided accepting such an extreme theory, asserted that in the beginning sex relations were confused and unregulated, and that all forms of marriage—polyandry, polygyny, monogamy, and promiscuity— existed alongside of one another and that monogamy survived through its being the superior form.
Before giving a criticism in detail of this theory let us note whether the evidence from the lowest peoples confirms it. The lowest peoples in point of culture are not the North American Indians nor the African Negroes, but certain isolated groups that live almost in a state of nature, without any attempt to cultivate the soil or to control nature in other respects. Such are the Bushmen of South Africa, the Australian Aborigines, the Negritos of the Philippine Islands and of the Andaman Islands, the Veddahs of Ceylon, and the Fuegians of South America. Now all of these peoples, with a possible exception, practice monogamy and live in relatively stable family groups. Their monogamy, however, is not of the type which we find in patriarchal times or among civilized peoples, but is a simple pairing monogamy, husband and wife remaining together indefinitely if children are born, but if no children are born, separation may easily take place. Westermarck in his History of Human Marriage has reviewed at length all of the evidence from these lower peoples and shows undoubtedly that nothing approaching promiscuity existed among them. Promiscuity is apt to be found at a higher stage of social development, and is especially apt to be found among the nature peoples after the white man has visited them and demoralized their family life. But in all these cases the existence of promiscuity is manifestly something exceptional and abnormal. Perhaps civilized peoples such as the Romans of the decadence have more nearly approximated the condition of promiscuity than any savage people of which we have knowledge. At any rate, one must conclude that the lowest existing savages found in the nineteenth century had definite forms of family life, and that the type usually found was the simple pairing monogamy which we have just mentioned.
Objections to the Hypothesis of a Primitive State of Promiscuity.—We may now briefly sum up the main criticisms of this theory of a primitive state of promiscuity, not only as we may derive them from inductive study of the higher animals and the lower peoples, but also as we may deduce them from known psychological and biological facts or principles.
(1) In the first place, then, the animals next to man, namely, the anthropoid apes, do not show a condition of promiscuity.
(2) The evidence from the lower peoples does not show that such a condition exists or has ever existed among them.
(3) A third argument against this hypothesis may be gained from what we know of primitive economic conditions. Under the most primitive conditions, in which man had no mastery over nature, food supply was relatively scarce, and as a rule only very small groups of people could live together. The smallness of primitive groups, on account of the scarcity of food supply, would prevent anything like promiscuity on a large scale.
(4) A fourth argument of a deductive nature is that the jealousy of the male, which characterizes all higher animals and especially man, would prevent anything like the existence of sexual promiscuity. The tendency of man would have been to appropriate one or more women for himself and drive away all rivals. Long ago Darwin argued that this would prevent anything like the existence of a general state of promiscuity.
(5) A fifth argument against this theory may be got from the general biological fact that sexual promiscuity tends to pathological conditions unfavorable to fecundity, that is, fertility, or the birth of offspring. Physicians have long ago ascertained this fact, and the modern prostitute gives illustration of it by the fact that she has few or no children. Among the lower animal species, in which some degree of promiscuity obtains, moreover, powerful instincts keep the sexes apart except at the pairing season. Now, no such instincts exist in man. Promiscuity in man would, therefore, greatly lessen the birth rate, and any group that practiced it to any extent would soon be eliminated in competition with other groups that did not practice it.
(6) We have finally the general social fact that promiscuity would lead to the neglect of children. Promiscuity means that the male parent does not remain with the female parent to care for the offspring and, therefore, in the human species it would mean that the care of children would be thrown wholly upon the mother. This means that the children would have less chance of surviving. Not only would promiscuity lead to lessening the birth rate, but it would lead to a much higher mortality in children born. This is found to be a striking fact wherever we find any degree of promiscuity among any people. Hence, promiscuity would soon exterminate any people that practiced it extensively in competition with other peoples that did not practice it.
From all of these lines of argument, without going over the evidence in greater detail, it seems reasonable to conclude with Westermarck "that the hypothesis of a primitive state of promiscuity has no foundation in fact and is essentially unscientific." The facts put forth in support of the theory do not justify the conclusion, Westermarck says, that promiscuity has ever been a general practice among a single people and much less that it was the primitive state. Promiscuity is found, however, more or less in the form of sexual irregularities or immorality among all peoples; more often, however, among the civilized than among the uncivilized, but among no people has it ever existed unqualified by more enduring forms of sex relation. Moreover, because promiscuity breaks up the social bonds, throws the burden of the care of children wholly upon the mother, and lessens the birth rate, we are justified in concluding that promiscuity is essentially an antisocial practice. This agrees with the facts generally shown by criminology and sociology, that the elements practicing promiscuity to any great extent in modern societies are those most closely related with the degenerate and criminal elements. Those elements, in other words, in modern society that practice promiscuity are on the road to extinction, and if a people generally were to practice it there is no reason to believe that such a people would meet with any different fate.
The Earliest Form of the Family Life in the Human Species, therefore, is probably that of the simple pairing monogamous family found among many of the higher animals, especially the anthropoid apes, and also found among the lower peoples. This primitive monogamy, however, as we have already seen, was not accompanied by the social, legal, and religious elements that the historic monogamic family has largely rested upon. On the contrary, this primitive monogamy rested solely upon an instinctive basis, and, as we have seen, unless children were born it was apt to be relatively unstable. Permanency in family relations among primitive peoples depended largely upon the birth of children. Thus we find confirmed our conclusion drawn some time ago that family life rests primarily upon the parental instinct. That it still so rests is shown by the fact, as we shall see later, that divorce is many times more common among couples that have no children than among those that have children.
SOME GENERAL CONCLUSIONS, both of theoretical and practical bearing, may here be pointed out. We have seen that the biological processes of life have created the family, and that the family, as an institution, rests upon these biological conditions. Hence it is not too much to say, first, that the family is not a man-made institution; and, secondly, that it rests upon certain fundamental instincts of human nature. Now, both of these statements are also true to a certain extent as to human society in general. There is a sense in which social organization is not wholly man-made, and it is true that all human institutions rest to some extent upon human instincts. This is not saying, of course, that man has not modified and may not modify social organization and human institutions through his reason, but it is saying that the essential elements in human institutions and in the social order must correspond to the conditions of life generally and to the instincts which natural selection has implanted in the species. To attempt to reorganize human society or to reconstruct institutions regardless of the biological conditions of life, or regardless of human instincts, is to meet with certain failure.
A practical conclusion which may be drawn also is that those people who advocate sexual promiscuity in present society, or free love, as they please to style it, are advocating a condition which would result in the elimination of any group that practiced it. Promiscuity, or even great instability in the family life, as we have already seen, would lead to the undermining of everything upon which a higher civilization rests. The people in modern society who advocate such theories as free love, therefore, are more dangerous than the worst anarchist or the most revolutionary socialist. In other words, the modern attack upon the family is more of a menace to all that is worth while in human life than all attacks upon government and property, although it is not usually resented as such; and it is one of the most serious signs of the times that many intellectual people have indorsed such views. We must reemphasize, therefore, the fact that the family is the central institution of human society, that industry and the state must subordinate themselves to its interest. Neither the state nor industry has had much to do with the origin of the family, and neither the state nor industry may safely determine its forms independent of the biological requirements for human survival. Moreover, it is evident that human society from the beginning has in more or less instinctive, and also in more or less conscious, ways attempted to regulate the relations between the sexes with a view to controlling the reproductive process. While material civilization is mainly a control over the food process, moral civilization involves a control over the reproductive process, that is, over the birth and rearing of children; and such control over the reproductive process, which has certainly been one of the aims of all social organization in the past, whether of savage peoples or of civilized peoples, evidently precludes anything like the toleration of promiscuity or even of free love.
SELECT REFERENCES
For brief reading:
WESTERMARCK, History of Human Marriage, Chaps. I-VI.
HOWARD, History of Matrimonial Institutions, Vol. I, Chaps. I-III
HEINEMAN, Physical Basis of Civilization, Chaps. IV-VII.
For more extended reading:
CRAWLEY, The Mystic Rose: A Study of Primitive Marriage.
GEDDES AND THOMSON, Evolution of Sex.
LETOURNEAU, The Evolution of Marriage.
MORGAN, Ancient Society.
STARCKE, The Primitive Family.
SPENCER, Principles of Sociology, Vol. I.
CHAPTER V
THE FORMS OF THE FAMILY
The family as an institution has varied greatly in its forms from age to age and from people to people. This is what we should expect, seeing that all organic structures are variable. Such variations in human institutions are due partially to the influences of the environment, partially to the state of knowledge, and partially to many other causes as yet not well understood. The family illustrates in greater or less degree the working of these causes of variation and of change in human institutions.
The Maternal and Paternal Families.—As regards the general form of the family we have to note first of all the two great forms which we may characterize respectively as "the maternal family" and "the paternal family." As we have already seen, Bachofen, Morgan, and others discovered a condition of human society in which relationship was traced through mothers only, and in which property or authority descended along the female line rather than along the male line. Further investigation and research have shown that up to recent times, say up to fifty years ago, one half of all the peoples of the world, if we reckon them by nations and tribes rather than by numbers, practiced this system of reckoning kinship through mothers only, and passed property and authority down along the female line. Ethnologists and sociologists have practically concluded, from the amount of evidence now collected, that this maternal or metronymic system was the primitive system of tracing relationships, and that it was succeeded among the European peoples by the paternal system so long ago that the transition from the one to the other has been forgotten, except as some trace of it has been preserved in customs, legends, and the like.
Among many tribes of the North American Indians this metronymic or maternal system was peculiarly well-developed. Children took their mother's name, not their father's name; belonged to their mother's clan, not their father's clan; and the chief transmitted his authority, if hereditary, not to his own son, but to his eldest sister's son. The relatives on the father's side, indeed, were quite ignored. Frequently the maternal uncle had more legal authority over the children than their own father, seeing that the children belonged to his clan, that is, to their mother's clan.
Now, Bachofen claimed not only that in this stage was kinship reckoned through mothers only, but that women were dominant socially and politically; that there existed a true matriarchy, or rule of the mothers. Do the facts support Bachofen's theory? Let us see. The Iroquois Indians, among whom Morgan lived, were a typical maternal or metronymic people. Among them, without any doubt, the women had a position of influence socially and even politically which often is not found among peoples of higher culture. For example, among the Iroquois the government of the clan was in the hands of four women councilors (Matrons), who were elected by all the adults in the clan. These four women councilors, however, elected a Peace Sachem, who carried out the will of the clan in all matters pertaining to peace generally. Moreover, the councilors of the several clans, four fifths of whom were women, met together to form the Tribal Council; but in this Tribal Council the women sat separate, not participating in the deliberations, but exercising only a veto power on the decisions of the men. In matters of war, however, government was intrusted to two war chiefs elected from the tribe generally, the women here only having the right to veto the decision of the tribe to enter upon the warpath. Thus we see that while the women of the Iroquois Indians had a great deal of social and political influence, the actual work of government was largely turned over by them to the men, and especially was this true of directing the affairs of the tribe in time of war. There is no doubt, however, that in the maternal stage of social evolution women had an influence in domestic, religious, and social matters much greater than they had at many later stages of social development. Among the Zuni of New Mexico, for example, another well-developed maternal people, marriage is always arranged by the bride's parents. The husband goes to live with his wife, and is practically a guest in his wife's house all his life long, she alone having the right of divorce. Indeed, among all maternal peoples the rule is that the husband goes to live with the wife, and not the wife with the husband, the children, as we have already seen, keeping the mother's name and belonging to her kindred or clan.
Nevertheless we cannot agree with Bachofen that a true matriarchy, or government by women, ever existed. On the contrary, among all of these maternal peoples, while the women may have much influence socially and politically, the men, on account of their superior strength, are intrusted with the work not only of protecting and providing for the families and driving away enemies, but also largely with the work of maintaining the internal government and order of the people. Strictly speaking, therefore, there has never been a matriarchal stage of social evolution, but rather a maternal or metronymic stage.
We have already said that this stage was probably the primitive one. How are we to explain, then, that primitive man reckoned kinship through mothers only? Was this due, as Morgan thought, to a primitive practice of promiscuity which prevented tracing relationships through fathers? The reply is, that among the many maternal peoples now well known, among whom relationships are traced through mothers only, we find no evidence of the practice of general promiscuity now or even in remote times. The North American Indians, for example, had quite definite forms of the family life and were very far removed from the practice of promiscuity, though they traced relationship through mothers only. It is evident that the causes of the maternal family and the maternal system of relationship are not so simple as Morgan supposed. What, then, were the causes of the maternal system? It is probable that man in the earliest times did not know the physiological connection between father and child. The physiological connection between mother and child, on the other hand, was an obvious fact which required no knowledge of physiology to establish; therefore, nothing was more natural than for primitive man to recognize that the child was of the mother's blood, but not of the father's blood. Therefore, the child belonged to the mother's people and not to the father's people. If it be asked whether it is possible that there could be any human beings so ignorant that they do not know the physiological connection between father and child, the reply is, that this is apparently the case among a number of very primitive peoples, even down to recent times. It is not infrequent among these peoples to find conception and childbirth attributed to the influence of the spirits, rather than to relations between male and female. While, therefore, a social connection between the father and the children was recognized, leading the father to provide in all ways for his children, as fathers do whether among civilized or uncivilized peoples, yet the blood relationship between the father and the child could not have been clear in the most primitive times.
Perhaps an even more efficient cause, however, of the maternal system was the fact that the mother in primitive times was the stable element in the family life, the constant center of the family. The husband was frequently away from home, hunting or fighting, and oftentimes failed to return. Nothing was more natural, therefore, than that the child should be reckoned as belonging to the mother, take her name and belong to her kindred or clan. Moreover, after the custom of naming children from mothers and reckoning them as belonging to the mother's clan was established, it could not be displaced by the mere discovery of the physiological connection between the father and the child. On the contrary social habits, like habits in the individual, tend to persist until they work badly. We find, therefore, the maternal system persisting among peoples who for many generations had come fully to recognize the physiological connection of father and child. Indeed, the maternal system could never have been done away with if social evolution had not brought about new and complex conditions which caused the system to break down and to be replaced by the paternal system.
The Paternal or Patriarchal Family. At a certain stage we find, then, that a vast revolution took place in human society, especially in the family life, and the family and society generally came to be organized more definitely in regard to the male element. At a certain period, indeed, we find that the authority of the husband and father in the family has become supreme, and that he is practically owner of all persons and property of the family group, the wife and children being reduced, if not to the position of property, at least to the position of subject persons. This is the patriarchal family, classical pictures of which we find set forth in the pages of the Old Testament. How, then, did the transition take place from the maternal system, in which the mother was so important in the family, to the paternal system, in which the father was so all-important? What were the causes which brought about the breakdown of the maternal system and the gradual development of the patriarchal family? Some of these causes we can clearly make out from the study of social history.
(1) War was unquestionably a cause of the breakdown of the maternal system through the fact that women were captured in war, held as slaves, and made wives or concubines by their captors. These captured wives were regarded as the property of the captor. Any children born to them were, therefore, also regarded as the property of the captor. Furthermore, these captured wives were separated from their kindred, and their children could not possibly belong to any clan except their husband's. Manifestly this cause could not have worked in the earliest times, when slave captives were not valuable; but as soon as slavery became instituted in any form, then women slaves were particularly valued, not only for their labor, but because they might be either concubines or wives. It is evident, then, that war and slavery would thus indirectly tend to undermine the maternal system.
(2) Wife purchase would operate in the same way. Among peoples that had developed a commercial life as well as slavery it early became the practice to purchase wives. It is evident that these purchased wives would be regarded as a sort of property, and the husband would naturally claim the children as belonging to him. Among certain North American Indians we find exactly this state of affairs. If a man married a wife without paying the purchase price for her, then her children took her name and belonged to her clan; but if he had purchased her, say with a number of blankets, then the children took his name and belonged to his clan.
(3) The decisive cause, however, of the breakdown of the maternal system was the development of the pastoral stage of industry. Now, the grazing of flocks and herds requires considerable territory and necessitates small and compact groups widely separated from one another. Hence, in the pastoral stage the wife must go with the husband and be far removed from the influence and authority of her own kindred. This gave the husband greater power over his wife. Moreover, the care of flocks and herds accentuated the value of the male laborer, while primitively woman had been the chief laborer. In the pastoral stage the man had the main burden of caring for the flocks and herds. Under such circumstances nothing was more natural than that the authority of the owner of the family property should gradually become supreme in all matters, and we find, therefore, among all pastoral peoples that the family is itself a little political unit, the children taking the father's name, property and authority passing down along the male line, while the eldest living male is usually the ruler of the whole group.
(4) After all these causes came another factor—ancestor worship. While ancestor worship exists to some extent among maternal peoples, it is usually not well-developed for some reason or other until the paternal stage is reached. Ancestor worship, being the worship of the departed ancestors as heroes, seems to develop more readily where the line of ancestors are males. It may be suggested that the male ancestor is apt to be a more heroic figure than the female ancestor. At any rate, when ancestor worship became fully developed it powerfully tended to reenforce the authority of the patriarch, because he was, as the eldest living ancestor, the representative of the gods upon earth, therefore his power became almost divine. Religion thus finally came in to place the patriarchal family upon a very firm basis.
Thus we see how each of these two great forms, the maternal family and the paternal family, arose out of natural conditions, and therefore they may be said to represent two great stages in the social evolution of man. It is hardly necessary to point out that civilized societies are now apparently entering upon a third stage, in which there will be relative equality given to the male and the female elements that go to make up the family.
Polyandry.—We must notice now the various forms of marriage by which the family has been constituted among different peoples and in different ages. Marriage, like the family itself, is variable, and an indefinite number of forms may be found among various peoples. We shall notice, however, only the three leading forms,—polyandry, polygyny, and monogamy,—and attempt to show the natural conditions which favor each. It is evident that if we assume that the primitive form of the family was that of a simple pairing monogamy, the burden is laid upon us to show how such different types as polyandry and polygyny arose.
Polyandry, or the union of one woman with several men, is a relatively rare form of marriage and the family, found only in certain isolated regions of the world. It is particularly found in Tibet, a barren and inhospitable plateau north of India and forming a part of the Chinese Empire. It is also found in certain other isolated mountainous regions in India, and down to recent times also in Arabia. In none of these places does it exist exclusively, but rather alongside of monogamy and perhaps other forms of the family. Thus in Tibet the upper classes practice polygyny and monogamy, while among the lower classes we find polyandry and monogamy. In all these regions where polyandry occurs, moreover, it is to be noted that the conditions of life are harsh and severe. Tibet is an exceptionally inhospitable region, with a climate of arctic rigor, the people living mainly by grazing. Under such circumstances it is conceivably difficult for one man to support and protect a family. At any rate, the form of polyandry which we find in Tibet suggests that such economic conditions may have been the main cause of its existence. Ordinarily in Tibet a polyandrous family is formed by an older brother taking a wife, and then admitting his younger brothers into partnership with him. The older brother is frequently absent from home, looking after the flocks, and in his absence one of the younger brothers assumes the headship of the family. Under such circumstances we can see how the natural human instincts which would oppose polyandry under ordinary circumstances, namely, the jealousy of the male, might become greatly modified, or cease to act altogether. Certain other conditions besides economic ones might also favor the existence of polyandry, such as the scarcity of women. Summing up, we can say, then, that this rare form of the family seems to have as its causes: (1) In barren and inhospitable countries the labor of one man is sometimes found not sufficient to support a family. (2) Also there probably exists in such regions an excess of males. This might be due to one of two causes: First, the practice of exposing female infants might lead to a scarcity of women; secondly, in such regions it is found that from causes not well understood a larger number of males are born. It may be noted as a general fact that when the conditions of life are hard in human society, owing to famine, war, or barrenness of the soil, a larger number of male births take place. We may therefore infer that this would disturb the numerical proportion of the sexes in such regions. (3) A third cause may be suggested as having something to do with the matter, namely, that habits of close inbreeding, or intermarriage, might perhaps tend to overcome the natural repugnance to such a relation. Moreover, close inbreeding also, as the experiments of stock-breeders show, would tend to produce a surplus of male births, and so would act finally in the same way as the second cause.
POLYGYNY, [Footnote: The word "polygamy" is too broad in its meaning to use as a scientific term for this form of the family. "Polygamy" comes from two Greek words meaning "much married;" hence it includes "polyandry" (having several husbands) and "polygyny" (having several wives).] or the union of one man with several women, is a much more common form of marriage. It is, in fact, to be found sporadically among all peoples and in all ages. It has perhaps existed at least sporadically from the most primitive times, because we find that at least one of the anthropoid apes, namely, the gorilla, practices it to some extent. It is manifest, however, that it could not have existed to any extent among primitive men, except where food supply was exceptionally abundant. In the main, polygyny is a later development, then, which comes in when some degree of wealth has been accumulated, that is, sufficient food supply to make it possible for one man to support several families. Polygyny came in especially after women came to be captured in war and kept as slaves or wives. The practice of wife capture, indeed, and the honor attached to the custom, had much to do in making the practice of polygyny common among certain peoples. Wherever slavery has existed, we may also note, polygyny, either in its legal form or in its illegal form of concubinage, has flourished. Polygyny, indeed, is closely related with the institution of slavery and is practically coextensive with it. In the ancient world it existed among the Hebrews and among practically all of the peoples of the Orient, and also sporadically among our own Teutonic ancestors. In modern times polygyny still exists among all the Mohammedan peoples and to a greater or less degree among all semicivilized peoples. It exists in China in the form of concubinage. It even exists in the United States, for all the evidence seems to show that the Utah Mormons still practice polygyny to some extent, although it may be doubted whether polygynous unions are being formed among them at the present time.
Two facts always need to be borne in mind regarding polygyny: First, that wherever it is practiced it is relatively confined to the upper and wealthy classes, for the reason that the support of more than one family is something which only the wealthy classes in a given society could assume. Secondly, it follows that under ordinary circumstances only a small minority of a given population practice polygyny, even in countries in which it is sanctioned. In Mohammedan countries like Turkey and Egypt, for example, it is estimated that not more than five per cent of the families are polygynous, while in other regions the percentage seems to be still smaller. The reason for this is not only the economic one just mentioned, but that everywhere the sexes are relatively equal in numbers, and therefore it is impossible for polygyny to become a widespread general custom. If some men have more than one wife it is evident that other men will probably have to forego marriage entirely. This is not saying that under certain circumstances, namely, the importation of large numbers of women, a higher per cent of polygynous families may not exist. It is said that among the negroes on the west coast of Africa the number of polygynous families reaches as high as fifty per cent, owing to the fact that female slaves are largely imported into that district, and that they serve not only as wives, but do the bulk of the agricultural labor, the male negro preferring female slaves, who can do his work and be wives at the same time, to male slaves. But such cases as these are altogether exceptional and manifestly could not become general.
Summing up, we may say that the causes of polygyny are, then:
(1) First of all, the brutal lust of man. No doubt man's animal propensities have had much to do with the existence of this form of the family. Nevertheless, while male sensuality is at the basis of polygyny, it would be a mistake to think that sensuality is an adequate explanation in all cases. On the contrary, we find many other causes, chiefly, perhaps, economic, operating also to favor the development of polygyny.
(2) One of these is wife capture, as we have already seen. The captured women in war were held as trophies and slaves, and later became wives or concubines. Among all peoples at a certain stage the honor of wife capture has alone been a prolific cause of polygyny.
(3) Another cause, after slavery became developed, was the high value set on women as laborers. Among many barbarous peoples the women do the main part of the work. They are more tractable as slaves, and consequently a high value is set upon their labor. As we have already seen, these female slaves usually serve at the same time as concubines, if not legal wives of their masters.
(4) Another cause which we can perhaps hardly appreciate at the present time is the high valuation set on children. We see this cause operating particularly in the case of the patriarchs of the Old Testament. Under the patriarchal family great value was set upon children as necessary to continue the family line. Where the device of adoption was not resorted to, therefore, in case of barrenness or the birth exclusively of female children, nothing was more natural than that polygyny should be resorted to in order to insure the family succession. In the patriarchal family also a high valuation was necessarily set upon children, because the larger the family grew the stronger it was.
(5) Finally, religion came to sanction polygyny. The religious sanction of polygyny cannot be looked upon as one of its original causes, but when once established it reacted powerfully to reenforce and maintain the institution. How the religious sanction came about we can readily see when we remember that very commonly religions confuse the practice of the nobility with what is noble or commendable morally. The polygynous practices of the nobility, therefore, under certain conditions came to receive the sanction of religion. When this took place polygyny became firmly established as a social institution, very difficult to uproot, as all the experience of Christian missionaries among peoples practicing polygyny goes to show. We may note also the general truth, that while religion does not originate human institutions or the forms of human association, it is preeminently that which gives fixity and stability to institutions through the supernatural sanction that it accords them.
Some judgment of the social value of polygyny may not be out of place in connection with this subject. Admitting, as all students of social history must, that in certain times and places the polygynous form of family has been advantageous, has served the interests of social survival and even of civilization, yet viewed from the standpoint of present society it seems that our judgment of polygyny must be wholly unfavorable. In the first place, as we have already seen, polygyny is essentially an institution of barbarism. It arose largely through the practice of wife capture and the keeping of female slaves. While often adjusted to the requirements of barbarous societies, it seems in no way adjusted to a high civilization. Polygyny, indeed, must necessarily rest upon the subjection and degradation of women. Necessarily the practice of polygyny must disregard the feelings of women, for women are jealous creatures as well as men. No high regard for the feelings of women, therefore, would be consistent with the practice of polygyny. Finally, all the evidence that we have goes to show that under polygyny children are neglected, and, at least from the standpoint of a high civilization, inadequately socialized. This must necessarily be so, because in the polygynous family the care of the children rests almost entirely with the mother. While we have no statistics of infant mortality from polygynous countries, it seems probable that infant mortality is high, and we know from experience with polygynous families in our own state of Utah, according to the testimony of those who have worked among them, that delinquent children are especially found in such households. Fatherhood, in the full sense of the word, can hardly be said to exist under polygyny.
Those philosophers, like Schopenhauer, who advocate the legalizing of polygyny in civilized countries, are hardly worth replying to. It is safe to say that any widespread practice of polygyny in civilized communities would lead to a reversion to the moral standards of barbarism in many if not in all matters. That polygyny is still a burning question in the United States of the twentieth century is merely good evidence that we are not very far removed yet from barbarism.
MONOGAMY, as we have already seen, has been the prevalent form of marriage in all ages and in all countries. Wherever other forms have existed monogamy has existed alongside of them as the dominant, even though perhaps not the socially honored, form. All other forms of the family must be regarded as sporadic variations, on the whole unsuited to long survival, because essentially inconsistent with the nature of human society. In civilized Europe monogamy has been the only form of the family sanctioned for ages by law, custom, and religion. The leading peoples of the world, therefore, practice monogamy, and it is safe to say that the connection between monogamy and progressive forms of civilization is not an accident.
What, then, are the social advantages of monogamy which favor the development of a higher type of culture? These advantages are numerous, but perhaps the most important of them can be grouped under six heads.
(1) The number of the two sexes, as we have already seen, is everywhere approximately equal. This means that monogamy is in harmony with the biological conditions that exist in the human species. The equal number of the two sexes has probably been brought about through natural selection. Why nature should favor this proportion of the sexes can perhaps be in part understood when we reflect that with such proportion there can be the largest number of family groups, and hence the best possible conditions for the rearing of offspring.
(2) Monogamy secures the superior care of children in at least two respects. First, it very greatly decreases mortality in children, because under monogamy both husband and wife unite in their care. Again, monogamy secures the superior upbringing and, therefore, the superior socialization of the child. In the monogamous family much greater attention can be given to the training of children by both parents. In other forms of the family not only is the death rate higher among children, but from the point of view of modern civilization, at least, they are inferiorly socialized.
(3) The monogamic family alone produces affections and emotions of the higher type. It is only in the monogamic family that the highest type of altruistic affection can be cultivated. It is difficult to understand, for example, how anything like unselfish affection between husband and wife can exist under polygyny. Under monogamy, husband and wife are called upon to sacrifice selfish desires in the mutual care of children. Monogamy is, therefore, fitted as a form of the family to foster altruism in the highest degree, and, as we have seen, the higher the type of altruism produced by the family life, the higher the type of the social life generally, other things being equal. It is especially to the credit of monogamy that it has created fatherhood in the fullest sense of the term, and therefore taught the male element in human society the value of service and self-sacrifice. Under polygynous conditions the father cannot devote himself to any extent to his children or to any one wife, since he is really the head of several households, and therefore, as we have already noted, fatherhood in the fullest sense scarcely exists under polygyny.
(4) Under monogamy, moreover, all family relationships are more definite and strong, and thus family bonds, and ultimately social bonds, are stronger. In the polygynous household the children of the different wives are half brothers and half sisters, hence family affection has little chance to develop among them, and as a matter of fact between children of different wives there is constant pulling and hauling. Moreover, because the children in a polygynous family are only half brothers this immensely complicates relationships, and even the line of ancestors. Legal relations and all blood relationships are, therefore, more entangled. It is no inconsiderable social merit of monogamy that it makes blood relationships simple and usually perfectly definite. All of this has an effect upon society at large, because the cohesive power of blood relationship, even in modern societies, is something still worth taking into account. But of course the main influence of all this is to be found in the family group itself, because it is only under such simple and definite relations as we find in the monogamous family that there is ample stimulus to develop the higher family affections.
(5) From all this it follows that monogamy favors the development of high types of religion and morals, family affection being an indispensable root of any high type of ethical religion. That form of the family which favors the development of the highest type of this affection will, therefore, favor the development of the highest type of religion. We see this even more plainly, perhaps, in ancient times than in the present time, because it was monogamy that favored the development of ancestor worship through making the line of ancestors clear and definite, and thus monogamy helped to develop this type of religion, which became the basis of still higher types.
(6) Monogamy not only favors the preservation of the lives of the children, but also favors the preservation of the lives of the parents, because it is only under monogamy that we find aged parents cared for by their children to any extent. Under polygyny the wife who has grown old is discarded for a young wife, and usually ends her days in bitterness. The father, too, under polygyny is rarely cared for by the children, because the polygynous household has never given the opportunity for close affections between parents and children. That monogamy, therefore, helps to lengthen life through favoring care of parents by children in old age is an element in its favor, for it adds not a little to the happiness of life, and so to the strength of social bonds, that people do not have to look forward to a cheerless and friendless old age.
In brief, the monogamic family presents such superior unity and harmony from every point of view that it is much more fitted to produce a higher type of culture. From whatever point of view we may look at it, therefore, there are many reasons why civilized societies cannot afford to sanction any other form of the family than that of monogamy.
The Relation of the Form of the Family to the Form of Industry.—As we have already seen, the form of the family is undoubtedly greatly influenced by the form of industry. This is so markedly the case that some sociologists and economists have claimed that the form of the family life is but a reflection of the form of the industrial life; that the family in its changes and variations slavishly follows the changes in economic conditions. That such an extreme view as this is a mistake can readily be seen from a brief review of the causes which have produced certain types of family life in certain periods. Thus, the maternal type of the family cannot be said by any means to have been determined by economic conditions. On the contrary, primarily the maternal family, as we have seen, was determined by certain intellectual conceptions, namely, the absence of knowledge of the physiological connection between father and child, though the economic conditions of primitive life tended powerfully to continue the maternal family long after intellectual conditions had changed. Again, it has been said that the patriarchal family owed its existence entirely to a form of industry, namely, pastoral industry, but, as we have seen, other factors also operated to produce the patriarchal type of the family, such as war, religion, and perhaps man's inherent desire to dominate. Moreover, religion continued the patriarchal family in many cases long after pastoral industry had ceased to be the chief economic form.
So too with the forms of marriage. While polygyny has been claimed to be due entirely to economic causes, we have seen that these so-called economic causes have only been the opportunities for the polygynous instincts of man to assert themselves. These polygynous instincts of man have asserted themselves more or less under all conditions of society, but under certain conditions, when there was an accumulation of wealth, and especially with the institution of slavery, they had greater opportunity to assert themselves than elsewhere. Thus the basic cause of polygyny is not economic, but psychological; and given certain moral and economic conditions of society, these polygynous tendencies assert themselves. Monogamy, on the other hand, has in no sense been determined by economic conditions but is fundamentally determined by the biological fact of the numerical equality of the sexes. This is doubtless the main reason why monogamy has been the prevalent form of the family everywhere. Certain moral and psychological factors which go along with the development of higher types of culture have, however, powerfully reenforced monogamy. It is doubtful if economic conditions can to any extent be shown to have equally reenforced the monogamic life.
Our conclusion must be, then, that while the form of the family and the form of industry are closely related, so closely that the form of industry continually affects more or less the family life, yet there is no reason for concluding that the form of the family is wholly or even chiefly determined by the form of industry.
SELECT REFERENCES
For brief reading:
WESTERMARCK, History of Human Marriage, Chaps. XX-XXII.
For more extended reading:
MCLENNAN, The Patriarchal Theory.
MORGAN, Ancient Society.
PARSONS, The Family.
WAKE, The Development of Marriage and Kinship.
CHAPTER VI
THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE FAMILY
While we cannot enter into the historical evolution of the family as an institution among the different civilized peoples, still it will be profitable for us to consider the history of the family among some single representative people in order that we may see the forces which have made and unmade the family life, and incidentally also to a great degree, the general social life of that people. We shall select the ancient Romans as the people among whom we can thus best study in outline the development of the family. While the family life of the ancient Hebrews is of particular interest to us because of the close connection of our religion and ethics with that of the Hebrews, yet in the family life of the ancient Romans constructive and destructive factors are more clearly marked and, therefore, the study of ancient Roman family life is best fitted to bring out those factors. The ancient Romans were among the earliest civilized of the Aryan peoples, and their institutions are, therefore, of peculiar interest to us as representing approximately the early Aryan type. What we shall say concerning Roman family life, moreover, will apply, with some modifications and qualifications, to the family life of other Aryan peoples, especially the Greeks. The Greeks and the Romans, indeed, were so closely related in their early culture that for the purpose of institutional history they may be considered practically one people. Without any attempt, then, to sketch the history of the family as an institution in general, let us note some of the salient features of the family life of the ancient Romans.
The Early Roman Family.—(1) Ancestor Worship as the Basis of the Early Roman Family. What we have said thus far indicates a close connection between the family life and religion among all peoples. This was especially true of the early Romans. It may be said, indeed, that ancestor worship was the constitutive principle of their family life. Among them the family seemed to have lost in part its character as a purely social institution and to have become specialized into a religious institution. At any rate, the early Roman family existed very largely for the sake of perpetuating the worship of ancestors. Of course, ancestor worship could have had nothing to do with the origin of the family life among the Romans. The type of their family life was patriarchal, and we have already noticed the causes which brought about the existence of the patriarchal family. But while ancestor worship had nothing to do with the origin of the family, once it was thoroughly established it became the basis of the family life and transformed the family as an institution.
The early Romans shared certain superstitions with many primitive peoples, which, if not the basis of ancestor worship, powerfully reinforced it. They believed, for example, that the soul continued in existence after death, and that persons would be unhappy unless buried in tombs with suitable offerings, and that if left unburied, or without suitable offerings, the souls of these persons would return to torment the living, Inasmuch as in the patriarchal family only sons could perform religious rites, that is, could make offerings to the departed spirits, these superstitions acted as a powerful stimulus to preserve the family in order that offerings might continue to be made at the graves of ancestors.
Thus, as we have already said, among the early Romans the family was practically a religious institution with ancestor worship as its constitutive principle. It is supposed by de Coulanges that in the earliest times the dead ancestors were buried beneath the hearth. At any rate, the hearth was the place where offerings were made to the departed ancestors, and the flame on the hearth was believed to represent the spirit of the departed. The house under such circumstances became a temple and the whole atmosphere of the family life was necessarily a religious one.
(2) The Authority in the Early Roman Family was vested, as in all patriarchal families, in the father or eldest living male of the family group. Under ancestor worship he became the living representative of the departed ancestors, the link between the living and the dead. Here we may note that the family was not considered as constituted simply of its living members, but that it included also all of its dead members. Inasmuch as the dead were more numerous and were thought to be more powerful than the living, they were by far the more important element in the life of the family. The position of the house father, as representative of the departed ancestors, and as the link between the living and the dead, naturally made his authority almost divine. Hence, the house father was himself, then, almost a deity, having absolute power over all persons within the group, even to the extent of life and death. This absolute power, which was known in the early Roman family as the "patria potestas," could not, however, be exercised arbitrarily. The house father, as representative of the departed ancestors, was necessarily controlled by religious scruples and traditions. It was impossible for him to act other than for what he believed to be the will of the ancestors. Disobedience to him was, therefore, disobedience to the divine ancestors, and hence was sacrilegious.
(3) Relationship in the Early Roman Family was determined by community of worship, inasmuch as only descendants upon the male side could perform religious rites, and inasmuch as married women worshiped the household gods of their husbands' ancestors; therefore, only descendants on the male side could worship the same ancestors and were relatives in the full religious and legal sense. These were known as "agnates." Later, some relationship on the mother's side came to be recognized, but relatives on the mother's side were known as a "cognates," and for a long time property could not pass to them. Indeed, in the earliest times the property of the family, as we have already implied, was kept as a unit, held in trust by the eldest living member of the family group for the good of all the family. In other words, the house father in earliest times did not possess the right to make a will but the property of the family passed intact from him to his eldest male heir.
(4) The Marriage Ceremony among the Early Romans was necessarily of a religious character. It was constituted essentially of the induction of the bride into the worship of her husband's ancestors. But before this could be done the bride's father had first to free her from the worship of her household gods, in later times a certificate of manumission being given not unlike the manumission of the slave. After the bride had been released from the worship of her father's ancestors, the bridegroom and his friends brought her to his father's house, where a ceremony of adoption was practically gone through with, adopting the bride into the family of her husband. The essence of this ceremony, as we have already said, was the induction of the bride into the worship of her husband's ancestors through their both making an offering on the family hearth and eating a sacrificial meal together. After that the wife worshiped at her husband's altar and had no claim upon the household gods of her father.
Under such circumstances it is not surprising that marriage was practically indissoluble. A wife who was driven out of her husband's household or deserted was without family gods of any sort, having no claim upon those of her husband, and became, therefore, a social outcast. Under such circumstances it is not surprising that divorce was practically unknown. It is said, indeed, that for five hundred and twenty years after Rome was founded there was not a single divorce in Rome. While this may be an exaggeration, it is historically certain that divorce was so rare in early Rome as to be practically unknown.
In case of a failure of sons to be born there was no taking of a second wife, as among the Hebrews. Polygyny was unknown in early Rome. The Roman device to prevent the failure of the family succession in such cases was adoption. Younger sons of other families were adopted if no sons were born, and these adopted sons, taking the family name, became the same legally as sons by birth. Inasmuch as the position of younger sons in the patriarchal household was not an enviable one there was never lack of candidates for the position of eldest son in some family group in which no sons had been born.
Not only was the early Roman family life the most stable that the world has ever known, but it must also be considered to have been of a relatively pure type. Chastity was rigidly enforced among the women, but of course, as in all primitive peoples, was not enforced among the men. Still it was expected that the married men at least should remain relatively faithful to their wives. On the whole, therefore, the early Roman family life must be judged to have been of a singularly high and stable type. While the position of women and children in the early Roman family was one of subjection, the family itself was nevertheless of a high type. But it was inevitable that it should decay, and this decay began comparatively early. Inasmuch as the early Roman family was based upon ancestor worship, a religion which was fitted for relatively small isolated groups, it was inevitable that the family life should decay with this ancestor worship. How early the decay of ancestor worship began it is impossible to say. Perhaps the nature gods, Jupiter, Venus, and the rest, existed alongside of ancestor worship from the earliest times. At any rate, we find their worship growing rapidly within the period of authentic history and undermining the domestic worship, while at a still later period skeptical philosophy undermined both religions. Along with the decay of ancestor worship went many economic and political changes which marked the dissolution of the patriarchal family. Let us see what some of the steps in this decadence were.
(5) The Decadence, (a) One of the earliest steps toward the breaking down of the patriarchal family which we find is the limiting of the power of the house father. This took place very early—as soon as the Council of Elders, or Senate, was formed to look after matters of collective interest. Gradually the paternal power diminished, until it was confined to matters concerning the family group proper.
(b) A second step was when the right to make a will was conceded. This right, as we have seen, did not exist in the earliest Roman times, but with the development of property and of a more complex economic life the house father was given the right to divide his property among his children, at first only on the male side, but later among any of his children, and still later to bequeath it to whom he pleased.
(c) Thus women came to be given the right to hold property, a thing which was unknown in the earliest times; and becoming property holders, their other rights in many respects began to increase. Originally the wife had no right to divorce her husband, but in the second century B.C. women also gained the right of divorcing their husbands.
(d) The rights of children were increased along with the rights of women, particularly of younger children.
(e) The right of plebeians to intermarry with the noble families became recognized. All of these changes we should perhaps regard as good in themselves, but they nevertheless marked the disintegration of the patriarchal family. The decay of the family life did not stop with these changes, however, but went on to the decay of the family bonds themselves.
Later Roman Family Life.—By the beginning of the Christian era the relations between the sexes had become very loose. Men not only frequently divorced their wives, but women frequently divorced their husbands. Indeed, a complete revolution passed over the Roman family. Marriage became a private contract, whereas, as we have seen, in the beginning it was a religious bond. Many loose forms of marriage were developed, which amounted practically to temporary marriages. In all cases it was easy for a husband or wife to divorce each other for very trivial causes. Among certain classes of Roman society the instability of the family became so great that we find Seneca saying that there were women who reckoned their years by their husbands, and Juvenal recording one woman as having eight husbands in five years.
Women and children achieved their practical emancipation, as we would say. Women, especially, were free to do as they saw fit. Marriages were formed and dissolved at pleasure among certain classes, and among all classes the instability of the family life had become very great.
Along with all this, of course, went a growth of vice. It is not too much to say that the Romans of the first and second centuries A.D. approached as closely to a condition of promiscuity as any civilized people of which we have knowledge.
Causes of the Decadence. When we examine the causes of this great revolution in Roman family life from the austere morals and stable family of the early Romans to the laxity and promiscuity of the later Romans, we find that these causes can perhaps be grouped under four or five principal heads, (1) First among all the causes we must put the destruction of the domestic religion, namely, ancestor worship, through the growth of nature worship and skeptical philosophy. The destruction of the domestic religion necessarily shattered the foundations of the Roman family, since, as we have already seen, there was the closest connection between the family life of the early Romans and ancestor worship. But it is not probable that ancestor worship was destroyed merely through the growth of nature worship and of skeptical philosophy. As we have already seen, it was a religion which was mainly adapted to isolated groups. Changes in economic and political conditions, therefore, were to some extent prior to the decay of the domestic religion.
(2) Changes in economic conditions, that is, in the form of industry, were, then, among the more important causes of the decay of the early Roman family. The patriarchal family, as we have already seen, belonged essentially to the pastoral stage of industry, and as soon as settled agricultural life, commerce, and manufacturing industry developed, this destroyed the isolated patriarchal groups, and so also in time affected even the religion which was their basis. Again, the increase of population going along with the changes in the methods in obtaining a living destroyed the old conditions under which the family had been the political unit.
(3) We have therefore as a third cause the breaking up of old political conditions. Family groups were welded into small cities and the authority of the patriarch was destroyed. Legislation designed to meet the new social conditions often profoundly affected the whole family group, and weakened family bonds.
(4) The growth of divorce and of vice may be put down as a fourth cause of the decay of the Roman family. Some may say that this was an effect of the decay of the Roman family rather than a cause, but it was also a cause as well as an effect, for it is a peculiarity of social life that what is at one stage an effect reacts to become a cause at a later stage; and this was certainly the case with the growth of divorce and vice in Rome, in its effect upon the Roman family. Moreover, much of this came from Greece through imitation. The family life had decayed in Greece much earlier than it had in Rome, and when Rome conquered Greece it annexed its vices also. While the most radical social changes do not usually come about merely through imitation, yet the imitation of a foreign people is frequently, in the history of a particular nation, one of the most potent causes in bringing about social changes. It was certainly so in the case of the growth of divorce and vice in Rome.
To sum up and to generalize: we may say that the causes of the decay of the Roman family life were very complex, and that this is true of nearly all important social changes. It is impossible to reduce the causes of these changes to any single principle or set of causes. While we have seen that changes in economic conditions were undoubtedly very influential in bringing about the profound changes in the Roman family, still we have no ground for regarding the economic changes as determinative of all the rest. We know as yet little of the development of industry in antiquity. What little we do know, however, furnishes good ground for claiming that changes in the methods of getting a living are among the most influential causes of social change in general; but there is nothing which warrants the sweeping generalization of Karl Marx and his followers, "that the method of the production of the material life determines the social, political, and spiritual life process in general." On the contrary, the evolution of the Roman family clearly shows moral and psychological factors at work quite independent of economic causes. The decay of ancestor worship, for example, cannot be wholly attributed to the change in the method of getting a living. The very growth of population and accompanying changes in political conditions probably had quite as much to do with the undermining of ancestor worship. Moreover, while religion may not be an original determining cause of social forms, it is, nevertheless, as we have already seen, especially that which gives them stability and permanency, so much so that the life history of a culture is frequently the life history of a religion. The decay of religious ideas and beliefs, therefore, from any cause, frequently proves the important element working for social change in all societies. So, too, changes in political conditions, especially changes in law through new legislation, frequently prove a profound modifying influence in societies. Lastly, there are certain moral causes inherent in the individual, oftentimes involving perverted expressions of instinct, which lead to profound social changes. Such was the vice which Rome copied very largely from Greece, but which proved the final solvent in its family life.
In general we may say, then, that there is no single principle which will explain the evolution of the family from the earliest times down to the present. Any attempt to reduce the evolution of the family to a single principle, or to show that it has been controlled by a single set of causes, must inevitably end in failure. The economic determinism of Marx and his followers, the ideological conceptions of Hegel, the geographical influences of Buckle and his school, and like explanations, are all found wanting when they are applied to the actual history of the family. It is not different with the theories of recent sociologists, who would strive to explain all social changes through a single principle. Professor Giddings' principle of "Consciousness of Kind" and Tarde's principle of "Imitation" will not go further in explaining the changes in the family life than some of the older principles that we have just mentioned. Human life is, indeed, too complex to be explained in terms of any single principle or any single set of causes. The family in particular is an organic structure which responds first to one set of stimuli and then to another. Now it is modified by economic conditions, now by religious ideas, now by legislation, now by imitation, and so on through the whole set of possible stimuli which may impinge upon and modify the activity of a living organism. So it is with all institutions.
The Influence of Christianity upon the Family.—While we cannot study further the evolution of the family in any detail, still it is necessary, in order to avoid too great discontinuity, to notice in a few sentences the influence of Christianity upon the family in Western civilization.
Early Christianity, as we have already seen, found the family life of the Greco-Roman world demoralized. The reconstruction of the family became, therefore, one of the first tasks of the new religion, and while other circumstances may have aided the church in this work, still on the whole it was mainly the influence of the early church that reconstituted the family life. From the first the church worked to abolish divorce, and fought as evil such vices as concubinage and prostitution, that came to flourish to such an extent in the Pagan world. Only very slowly did the early leaders of the church win the mass of the people to accepting their views as to the permanency of the marriage bond. In order to aid in making this bond more stable the early church recognized marriage as one of the sacraments, and, as implied, steadily opposed the idea of the later Roman Law that marriage was simply a private contract. The result was, eventually, that marriage came to be regarded again as a religious bond, and the family life took on once more the aspect of great stability. After the church had come fully into power in the Western world, legal divorce ceased to be recognized and legal separation was substituted in its stead. Thus the church succeeded in reconstituting the family life upon a stable basis, but the family after being reconstituted, was of a semipatriarchal type. Nothing was more natural than this, for the church had no model to go by except the paternal family of the Hebrew and Greek and Roman civilization. Nevertheless, the place of women and children in this semipatriarchal religious family established by the church was higher on the whole than in the ancient patriarchal family. The church put an end to the exposure of children, which had been common in Rome, and protected childhood in many ways. It also exalted the place of woman in the family, though leaving her subject to her husband. The veneration of the Virgin tended particularly to give women an honored place socially and religiously. Only by the advocacy and practice of ascetic doctrines may the early church be said to have detracted from the social valuation of the family. On the whole the reconstituting of the family by the church must be regarded as its most striking social work. But the thing for us to note particularly is that the type of the family life created by the church was what we might call a semipatriarchal type, in which the importance of husband and father was very much out of proportion to all the rest of the members of the family group. It was this semipatriarchal family which persisted down to the nineteenth century.
SELECT REFERENCES
For brief reading:
DE COULANGES, The Ancient City, Chaps. I-X.
LECKY, History of European Morals, Chap. V.
SCHMIDT, Social Results of Early Christianity, Chap. II.
For more extended reading:
HEARN, The Aryan Household.
HOWARD, History of Matrimonial Institutions.
GROTE, History of Greece.
MOMMSEN, The History of Rome.
On the early Hebrew family:
MCCURDY, History, Prophecy, and the Monuments, Vol. II.
ROBERTSON SMITH, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia.
On the early German family:
GUMMERE, Germanic Origins.
CHAPTER VII
THE PROBLEM OF THE MODERN FAMILY
Passing over the changes which affected the family during the Middle Ages and the still more striking changes which came through the Reformation, we must now devote ourselves to the study of the problems of the family as it exists at present. The religious theory of the family which prevailed during the Middle Ages, but which was more or less undermined by the Reformation, gave away entirely in those great social changes which ushered in the nineteenth century. Again, the view that marriage was a private contract came to prevail among the mass of the people, and even to be embodied in a great many of the constitutions and laws of the nineteenth century. At the same time profound economic changes tended largely to individualize society, and these were reflected in the democratic movement toward forms of popular government, which have tended on the whole to make the individual the political unit. The nineteenth century was, then, in all respects a period of great social change and unrest. Moreover, the growth of wealth has favored, in certain classes at least, lower moral standards and increasing laxity in family relationships. Thus it happens that we find the family life at the beginning of the twentieth century in a more unstable condition than it has been at any time since the beginning of the Christian era. The instability of the modern family is, indeed, so great that many have thought that the family, as an institution, in its present form at least, of permanent monogamy, will pass away. There can be no doubt, at any rate, that the whole problem of the modern family centers in the matter of its instability, that is, in divorce. The study of the divorce movement, then, will throw more light upon the condition of the modern family than the study of anything else. The instability of the modern family has been most evident in the United States. Hence, it is particularly American conditions that will concern us, although undoubtedly the disintegration of the family is not a peculiarly American phenomenon; rather it has characterized more or less all modern civilization, but is especially in evidence in America because American society has exaggerated the industrialism and individualism which are characteristic of Western civilization in general.
Without devoting too much time to the consideration of divorce statistics in their technical aspects, let us note, then, some of the main outlines of the modern divorce movement in this and other civilized countries.
Statistics of Divorce in the United States and Other Civilized Countries.—For a long time the United States has led the world in the number of its divorces. Already in 1885 this country had more divorces than all the rest of the Christian civilized world put together. These statistics of the number of divorces granted in different civilized countries in 1885 (taken from Professor W. F. Willcox's monograph on The Divorce Problem) are of sufficient interest to cite at length:
United States…………………. 23,472
France……………………….. 6,245
Germany………………………. 6,161
Russia……………………….. 1,789
Austria………………………. 1,718
Switzerland…………………… 920
Denmark………………………. 635
Italy………………………… 556
Great Britain and Ireland………. 508
Roumania……………………… 541
Holland………………………. 339
Belgium………………………. 290
Sweden……………………….. 229
Australia…………………….. 100
Norway……………………….. 68
Canada……………………….. 12
It will be noted that in this particular year (1885), when the United States had 23,472 divorces, all the other countries mentioned together had only 20,131. For 1905, twenty years later, the following statistics are available:
United States…………………. 67,976
Germany………………………. 11,147
France……………………….. 10,860
Austria-Hungary……………….. 5,785
Switzerland…………………… 1,206
Belgium………………………. 901
Holland………………………. 900
Italy (1904)………………….. 859
Great Britain and Ireland………. 821
Denmark………………………. 549
Sweden……………………….. 448
Norway……………………….. 408
Australia…………………….. 339
New Zealand…………………… 126
Canada……………………….. 33
It is evident from the above figures that the United States has more than kept its lead over the rest of the world in this matter of dissolving family ties, for it would seem probable from these figures that in 1905, when the United States had nearly 68,000 divorces, all the rest of the Christian civilized world put together had less than 40,000. Moreover, the divorce rates of the different countries tell the same story. In 1905 in France, there was only one divorce to every thirty marriages; in Germany, but one to every forty-four marriages; in England, but one to every four hundred marriages. Even in Switzerland, which has the highest divorce rate of any country of Europe, there was only one divorce in 1905 to every twenty-two marriages. Let us compare these rates with that of the United States, and particularly with the rates of several of the states that lead in the matter of divorces. In 1905 there was in the United States about one divorce to every twelve marriages, but the State of Washington had one divorce to every four marriages; Montana, one divorce to every five marriages; Colorado, Texas, Arkansas, and Indiana all had one divorce to every six marriages; California and Maine had one divorce to every seven marriages; New Hampshire, Missouri, and Kansas, one divorce to every eight marriages. While these rates are those of the states in which divorces are most numerous, yet, nevertheless, the number of states in which the divorce rates range from one to every six marriages to one to ten marriages are so numerous that they may be said to be fairly representative of American conditions generally. Some cities and localities have, of course, even higher divorce rates than any of the states that have been named. According to the United States Census Bulletin No. 20, there was in 1903 one divorce in Kansas City, Missouri, to every four marriages, and one divorce in the city of San Francisco to every three marriages.
Increase of Divorces in the United States. Not only does the United States lead the world in the number of its divorces, but apparently divorces are increasing in this country much more rapidly than the population. In 1867, the first year for which statistics for the country as a whole were gathered, there were 9937 divorces in the United States, but by 1906, the last year for which we have statistics, the total number of divorces granted in this country, yearly, had reached 72,062. Again, from 1867 to 1886 there were 328,716 divorces granted in the United States, but during the next twenty years, from 1887 to 1906, the number reached 945,625, or almost a total of 1,000,000 divorces granted in twenty years. Again, from 1867 to 1886 the number of divorces increased 157 per cent, while the population increased only about 60 per cent; from 1887 to 1906 the number of divorces increased over 160 per cent, while the population increased only slightly over 50 per cent. Thus it is evident that divorces are increasing in the United States three times as fast as the increase of population. It becomes, therefore, a matter of some curious interest to speculate upon what will be the end of this movement. If divorces should continue to increase as they have during the past forty years, it is evident that it would not be long before all marriages would be terminated by divorce instead of by death. In 1870, 3.5 per cent of all marriages were terminated by divorce; in 1880, 4.8 per cent were terminated by divorce, and in 1900, about 8 per cent. Professor Willcox has estimated that if this increasing divorce rate continues, by 1950 one fourth of all marriages in the United States will be terminated by divorce, and in 1990 one half of all marriages. Thus we are apparently within measurable distance of a time when, if present tendencies continue, the family, as a permanent union between husband and wife, lasting until death, shall cease to be. At least, it is safe to say that in a population where one half of all marriages will be terminated by divorce the social conditions would be no better than those in the Rome of the decadence. We cannot imagine such a state of affairs without the existence alongside of it of widespread promiscuity, neglect of childhood, and general social demoralization. Without, however, stopping at this point to discuss the results or the effects of the divorce movement upon society, let us now consider for a moment how these divorces are distributed among the various elements and classes of our population.
Distribution of Divorces. It is usually thought by those who have observed the matter most carefully that divorce especially characterizes the wealthy classes and the laboring classes, but is least common among the middle classes. We have no statistics to bear out this belief, but it seems probable that it is substantially correct. The divorce statistics which we have, however, indicate certain striking differences in the distribution of divorces by classes and communities.
(1) The divorce rate is higher in the cities than in their surrounding country districts. We have just noted, for example, that the divorce rate in Kansas City, Missouri, is one divorce to every four marriages, while in the state as a whole it is one to every eight marriages. There are, however, certain exceptions to this generalization.
(2) A curious fact that the census statistics show is that apparently the divorce rate is about four times as high among childless couples as among couples that have children. This doubtless does not mean that domestic unhappiness is four times more common in families where there are no children than in families that have children, but it does show, nevertheless, that the parental instinct, is now, as in primitive times, a powerful force to bind husband and wife together.
(3) While we have no statistics from this country telling us exactly what the distribution of divorces is among the various religious denominations, still we know that because the Roman Catholic Church is strongly against divorce, divorces are very rare in that denomination. In Switzerland, where the number of divorces among Protestants and Catholics has been noted, it is found that divorces are four times as common among Protestants as among Catholics. Some observers in this country have claimed that divorces are most common among those of no religious profession, next most common among Protestants, next among Jews, and least common among Roman Catholics.
(4) From this we might expect, as our statistics indicate, that the divorce rate is much higher among the native whites in this country than it is among the foreign born, for many of the foreign born are Roman Catholics, and, in any case, they come from countries where divorce is less common than in the United States.
(5) For the last forty years two thirds of all divorces have been granted on demand of the wife. This may indicate, on the one hand, that the increase of divorces is a movement connected with the emancipation of woman, and on the other hand it may indicate that it is the husband who usually gives the ground for divorce.
(6) The census statistics show three great centers of divorce in the United States. One is the New England States, one the states of the Central West, and one the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast states. These three centers are also typical centers of American institutions and ideas. The individualism of the New England, the Central West, and the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast regions has always been marked in comparison with some other sections of the country. But during the last twenty years divorce has also been increasing rapidly in the Southern states, and we now find such states as Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma well up toward the front among the states with a high divorce rate.
This distribution of divorces among the various elements and classes of the country suggests something as to the causes of divorce, and this will come out fully later in a discussion of the causes of the increase of divorce.
The Grounds for Granting Divorce.—There are no less than thirty-six distinct grounds for absolute divorce recognized by the laws of the several states, ranging from only one ground recognized in New York to fourteen grounds recognized in New Hampshire. For this reason some have supposed that many of the divorces in this country are granted on comparatively trivial grounds. Several states have, for example, what is known as an "Omnibus Clause," granting divorce for mere incompatibility and the like. But the examination of divorce statistics shows that very few divorces are granted on trivial grounds. On the contrary, most divorces seem to be granted for grave reasons, such as adultery, desertion, cruelty, imprisonment for crime, habitual drunkenness, and neglect on the part of the husband to provide for his family. These are usually recognized as grave reasons for the dissolution of the marriage tie. None of them at least could be said to be trivial. Professor Willcox showed that for the twenty year period, 1867 to 1886, over ninety-seven per cent of all divorces were granted for these six principal causes. Moreover, he also showed that over sixty per cent were granted for the two most serious causes of all,—adultery and desertion. Again, of the one million divorces granted from 1887 to 1906 over ninety-four per cent were granted for the six principal causes and over fifty-five per cent for adultery and desertion, while in still other cases adultery and desertion figured in combination with other causes (a total of over sixty-two per cent in all). Therefore, it seems probable that in nearly two thirds of the cases the marriage bond had already practically been dissolved before the courts stepped in to make the dissolution formal. We must conclude, therefore, that divorce is prevalent not because of the laxity of our laws, but rather because of the decay of our family life; that divorce is but a symptom of the disintegration of the modern family, particularly the American family.
In other words, divorce is but a symptom of more serious evils, and these evils have in certain classes of American society apparently undermined the very virtues upon which the family life subsists. This is not saying that vice is more prevalent to-day than it was fifty years ago. We have no means of knowing whether it is or not, and there may well be a difference of opinion upon such a subject. It is the opinion of some eminent authorities that there has been no growth of vice in the United States along with the growth of divorce, but this would seem to be doubtful. The very causes for which divorce is granted suggest a demoralization of certain classes. While there may not have been, therefore, any general growth of vice in the United States along with the growth of divorce, it is conceivable that it may have increased greatly in certain classes of American society. Be this as it may, it is not necessary to assume that there has been any growth of vice in the American population, for if actual moral practices are no higher than they were fifty years ago that alone would be a sufficient reason to explain considerable disintegration of our family life. It is an important truth in sociology that the morality which suffices for a relatively simple social life, largely rural, such as existed in this country fifty years ago, is not sufficient for a more complex society which is largely urban, such as exists at the present time. Moreover, recognized moral standards within the past fifty years have largely been raised through the growth of general intelligence. It follows that immoral acts, which were condoned fifty years ago and which produced but slight social effect, to-day meet with great reprobation and have far greater social consequences than a generation ago. This is particularly true of the standards which the wife imposes upon the husband. For centuries, as we have already seen, the husband has secured divorce for adultery of the wife, but for centuries no divorce was given to the wife for the adultery of the husband; and this is even true to-day in modern England, unless the adultery of the husband be accompanied by other flagrant violations of morality. Conduct on the part of the husband, which the wife overlooked, therefore, a generation ago, is to-day sufficient to disrupt the family bonds and become a ground for the granting of a divorce. Even if vice, then, has not increased in our population, if moral practices are no higher to-day than fifty years ago, we should expect that this alone would have far different consequences now than then. The growth of intelligence and of higher and more complex forms of social organization necessitates realization of higher standards of conduct if the institutions of society are to retain their stability.
But there are grave reasons for believing that there has been in certain classes of society a decay of the very virtues upon which the family rests, for the family life requires not only chastity, but even more the virtues of self-sacrifice, loyalty, obedience, and self-subordination. Now there is abundant evidence to show that these particular virtues which belong to a self-subordinating life are those which have suffered most in the changes and new adjustments of modern society. We have replaced these virtues largely by those of self-interest, self-direction, and self-assertiveness.
Causes of the Increase of Divorce in the United States.—Let us note somewhat more in detail the causes of the increased instability of the American family during the past four or five decades. We have already in a rough way indicated some of these causes in studying the distribution of divorce and the grounds upon which it is granted. But the causes of the instability of the family so affect our whole social life and all of our institutions that they are well worth somewhat more detailed study.
(1) As the first of these causes of the increase of divorce in the United States we should put the decay of religion, particularly of the religious theory of marriage and the family. As we have already seen, no stable family life has existed anywhere in history without a religious basis, but within the last few decades religious sentiments, beliefs, and ideals have become largely dissociated from marriage and the family, and the result is that many people regard the institutions of marriage and the family as a matter of personal convenience. This decay of the religious view of the marriage bond has, however, had other antecedent causes, partially in the moral and intellectual spirit of our civilization, partially in our industrial conditions.
(2) We should put, therefore, as a second cause of the increase of divorces in this country the growing spirit of individualism. By individualism we mean here the spirit of self-assertion and self-interest, the spirit which leads a man to find his law in his own wishes, or even in his whims and caprices. Now, this growing spirit of individualism is undoubtedly more destructive of the social life than anything else. It makes unstable all institutions, and especially the family, because the family must rest upon very opposite characteristics. Our democratic government, the development of our industry, and our education have all been responsible to some extent for making the individual take his own interests and wishes as his law.
(3) Moreover, this individualism has spread within the last fifty years especially among the women of the population, and a great movement has sprung up which is known as the "Woman's Rights Movement," or simply the "Woman's Movement." Now this woman's movement has accompanied and in part effected the emancipation of women legally, mentally, and economically. The result is that women, as a class, have become as much individualized as the men, and oftentimes are as great practical individualists.
No one would claim that the emancipation of woman, in the sense of freeing her from those things which have prevented the highest and best development of her personality, is not desirable. But this emancipation of woman has brought with it certain opportunities for going down as well as for going up. Woman's emancipation has not, in other words, meant to all classes of women, woman's elevation. On the contrary, it has been to some, if not an opportunity for license, at least an opportunity for self-assertion and selfishness not consistent with the welfare of society and particularly with the stability of the family. We may remind ourselves once more that the Roman women achieved complete emancipation, but they did not thereby better their social position. On the contrary, the emancipation of woman in Rome meant woman's degradation, and ultimately the demoralization of Roman family life. While this is not necessarily an accompaniment of woman's emancipation, still it is a real danger which threatens, and of which we can already see many evidences in modern society. As in all other emancipatory movements, the dangers of freedom are found for some individuals at least to be quite as great as the dangers of subjection.
That the woman's movement has had much to do with the growth of divorce in this country gains substantiation from the fact that many of the leaders of that movement, like Miss Susan B. Anthony and Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, advocated free divorce, and their inculcation of this doctrine certainly could not have been without some effect.
But the woman's movement would have perhaps failed to develop, or at least failed of widespread support, if it had not been for the economic emancipation of woman through the opening to her of many new industrial callings and the securing for her a certain measure of economic independence. This, again, while perhaps a good thing in itself, has, nevertheless, facilitated the growing tendency to form unstable family relations. But this economic independence of woman, we need hardly remark, is the necessary and, indeed, inevitable outcome of modern industrial development.
(4) The growth of modern industrialism must, then, be regarded as one of the fundamental factors which has brought about the increase of divorce in the United States. By industrialism we mean manufacturing industry. As we have already noticed, the growth of manufacturing industry has opened a large number of new economic callings to woman and has rendered her largely economically independent of family relations. Moreover, the labor of women in factories has tended to disrupt the home, particularly in the case of married women, as we have already seen. For the laboring classes it has tended to make the home only a lodging place, with little or no development of a true family life. Again, such labor has set the sexes in competition with each other, has tended to reduce their sexual differences and to stimulate immensely their individualism. Finally, inasmuch as modern industrialism has tended to destroy the home, the result has been the production of unsocialized children, and especially of those that had no tradition of a family life. Girls, for example, through industrialism, have failed to learn the domestic arts, failed to have any training in homemaking, and therefore when they came to the position of wife and mother, they were frequently not fitted for such a life, and through their lack of adjustment rendered the homes which they formed unstable.
(5) Closely connected with the growth of modern industrialism is the growth of modern cities, and, as we have already seen, divorce is usually much more common in the cities than in the rural districts. The growth of the cities, in other words, has been a cause of the increase of divorce. City populations, on account of the economic conditions under which they live, are peculiarly homeless. A normal home can scarcely exist in the slums and in some of the tenement districts of our cities. Again, in the city there is perhaps more vice and other immorality, less control of the individual by public opinion, and more opportunity, on account of close living together and high standards of living, for friction, both within and without the domestic circle.
(6) The higher standards of living and comfort which have come with the growth of our industrial civilization, especially of our cities, must also be set down as a cause of increasing instability of the family. High standards of living are, of course, desirable if they can be realized, that is, if they are reasonable. But many elements of our population have standards of living and comfort which they find are practically impossible to realize with the income which they have. Many classes, in other words, are unable to meet the social demands which they suppose they must meet in order to maintain a home. To found and maintain a home, therefore, with these rising standards of living, and also within the last decade or two with the rising cost of living, requires such a large income that an increasingly smaller proportion of the population are able to do this satisfactorily. From this cause, undoubtedly, a great deal of domestic misery and unhappiness results, which finally shows itself in desertion or in the divorce court.
It is evident that higher standards of taste and higher standards of morality may also operate under certain circumstances to render the family life unstable in a similar way.
(7) Directly connected with these last mentioned causes is another cause,—the higher age of marriage. Some have thought that a low age of marriage was more prolific in divorces than a relatively high age of marriage. But a low age of marriage cannot be a cause of the increase of divorce in the United States, because the proportion of immature marriages in this country is steadily lessening, that is, the age of marriage is steadily increasing, and all must admit that along with the higher age of marriage has gone increasing divorce; and there may possibly be some connection between the two facts. As we have already seen, the higher standards of living make later marriage necessary. Men in the professions do not think of marriage nowadays until thirty, or until they have an independent income. Now, how may the higher age of marriage possibly increase the instability of the family? It may do so in this way. After thirty, psychologists tell us, one's habits are relatively fixed and hard to change. People who marry after thirty, therefore, usually find greater difficulty in adjusting themselves to each other than people who marry somewhat younger; and every marriage necessarily involves an adjustment of individuals to each other. This being so, we can readily understand that late marriages are more apt to result in faulty adjustments in the family relation than marriages that take place in early maturity.
(8) Another cause of the increase of divorce in the United States that has been given is the popularization of law which has accompanied the growth of democratic institutions. Law was once the prerogative of special classes, and courts were rarely appealed to except by the noble or wealthy classes; but with the growth of democratic institutions there has been a great spread of legal education, especially through the modern newspaper, and consequently a greater participation in the remedies offered by the courts for all sorts of wrongs, real or imagined. Many people, for example, who would not have thought of divorce a generation ago, now know how divorce may be secured and are ready to secure it. However, it would seem as though this cause of the increase of divorce might have operated to a greater extent twenty-five or thirty years ago than it has during the last two decades, for it cannot be said that since the nineties there has been much increase of legal education among the masses, or much greater popularization of the law.
(9) Increasing laxity of the laws regarding divorce and increasing laxity in the administration of the laws has certainly been a cause of increasing divorce in the United States, though back of these causes doubtless lie all the other causes just mentioned, and also increasing laxity in public opinion regarding marriage and divorce. To assume that laxity of the laws and of legal administration has no influence upon the increase of divorce in a population is to go contrary to all human experience. The people of Canada and of England, for example, are not very different from ourselves in culture and in institutions, yet there is almost no divorce in England and in Canada as compared with the United States. Canada has a few dozen divorces annually, while we have over seventy thousand. Unquestionably the main cause of this great difference between Canada and the United States is to be found in the difference of their laws. This is not saying, however, that instability of the family does not characterize Canada and England as well as the United States, even though such instability does not express itself in the divorce courts.
Interesting statistics have been collected in numerous places in the country to show the laxity of the administration of the divorce laws. In many of the divorce courts of our large cities, for example, it has repeatedly been shown that the average time occupied by the court in granting a divorce is not more than fifteen minutes. In other words, divorce cases are frequently rushed through our divorce courts without solemnity, without adequate investigation, with every opportunity for collusion between the parties, so as to favor a very free granting of divorces. On the other hand, about one fourth of all the applications for divorce which come to trial are refused by the courts, showing that the courts are not so lax in all cases as they are sometimes pictured to be.
Moreover, the divorce courts have two excuses for their laxity. First, the divorce courts are always greatly overburdened with the number of cases before them; and, secondly, public opinion, which the courts as well as other phases of our government largely reflect, favors this laxity. This is shown by the fact that public opinion stands back of the lax divorce statutes of many states, all efforts to radically change these statutes having failed of recent years.
(10) Our study of the family has accustomed us to the thought that the family is an institution which, like all other human institutions, undergoes constant changes. Now at periods of change in any institution, periods of transition from one type to another, there is apt to be a period of confusion. The old type of institution is never replaced at once by a new type of institution ready-made and adjusted to the social life, but only gradually does the new institution emerge from the elements of the old. In the meantime, however, there may be a considerable period of confusion and anarchy. This social principle, we may note, rests upon a deeper psychological principle, that old habits are usually not replaced by new habits without an intervening period of confusion and uncertainty. In other words, in the transition from the old habit to the new habit there is much opportunity for disorganization and disintegration. It is exactly so in human society, because social institutions are but expressions of habit.
Now, the old semipatriarchal type of the family, which prevailed down to the beginning of the nineteenth century, the type of the family which we might perhaps properly call the monarchical type, has been disappearing for the past one hundred years,—is in fact already practically extinct, at least in America, but we have not yet built up a new type of the family to take its place. The old semipatriarchal family of our forefathers has gone, but no new type of the family has yet become general. A democratic type of the family in harmony with our democratic civilization must be evolved. But such a democratic type of the family can be stable only upon the condition that its stability is within itself and not without. Authority in various coercive forms made the old type of the family stable, but a stable basis for a new type of the family has not yet been found, or rather it has not been found by large elements of our population. Unquestionably a democratic ethical type of the family in which the rights of every one are respected and all members are bound together, not through fear or through force of authority, but through love and affection, is being evolved in certain classes of our society. The problem before our civilization is whether such a democratic ethical type of the family can become generalized and offer a stable family life to our whole population. It is evident that in order to do this there must be a considerable development, not only of the spirit of equality, but even more, a considerable development of social intelligence and ethical character in the minds of the people. To construct a stable family life of this character, however, which is apparently the only type which will meet the demands of modern civilization,—is not an impossibility, but is a delicate and difficult task which will require all the resources of the state, the school, and the church. There is, however, no ground as yet for pessimism regarding the future of our family life; rather all its instability and demoralization of the present are simply incident, we must believe, to the achievement of a higher type of the family than the world has yet seen. Such a higher type, however, will not come about without effort and forethought on the part of society's leaders.
Remedies for the Divorce Evil.—That the instability of the family and divorce, so far as it is an expression of that instability, is an evil in society is implied in all that has thus far been said concerning the origin, development, and functions of the family as an institution. We shall not stop, therefore, to argue this point since all preceding chapters amount to an argument upon this question. It may be added, however, that in so far as observations have been made of the results of divorce upon children, that the argument has been substantiated, for apparently the children of separated or divorced parents are much more apt to drift into poverty, vice, or crime, that is, into the unsocialized classes, than children who do not come from such disrupted homes. Assuming, then, without further argument that divorce, or rather the instability of the family, is an evil in modern society, the question arises, how can it be remedied?
If, as has already been implied, the real evil is not so much divorce as the decay of the family life, then it at once becomes evident that legislation can do little to correct the real evil. That it can do nothing, and that an attitude of laissez-faire is justified upon this question, is, of course, not implied. As we have already noted, the difference between the few divorces of the Dominion of Canada and the many divorces of the United States is largely due to a difference of laws; nevertheless, we cannot assume from this that there is a like difference in the state of the family life of the two countries. Unquestionably, however, legislation can do something even in the way of setting moral ideals before a people. Divorce laws should not be too lax if we do not wish a state to set low moral standards for its citizens. It is not too much to say, therefore, that the lax divorce laws of many of our states are a crime against civilization, even though making these laws much stricter might not of itself greatly check the decay of the family. Again, reasonable restrictions upon the remarriage of divorced parties might very well be insisted upon by law for the sake of public decency if nothing more. Present laws in many states permit the remarriage of divorced parties immediately upon granting of divorce. It would seem that a law requiring the innocent party to wait at least six months, and the guilty party to wait from two to five years and then give evidence of good conduct before being permitted to remarry, would work a hardship upon no one. Again, a uniform federal divorce and marriage law might have some good effects upon the family life of the nation. Divorce and marriage are of such general importance that they should be controlled by federal statutes rather than by state laws. If such an amendment to our present federal constitution were enacted, it might not result in greatly decreasing the number of divorces in this country, but it would result in bringing about uniformity in the different states in the matter of marriage as well as in the matter of divorce, which, from many points of view, is desirable. Moreover, if divorce were under federal control this would throw all divorce cases into the federal courts, and would, perhaps, secure a stricter administration of divorce laws.