species, and placed, anatomically, further forward in the brain, while yet the activity of the intellectual region can never, in the noblest cases, be independent of such stimulus, unless the habit of meditation has actually become preponderant, —a case too rare to be considered in a general view.-Lest we should form a false philosophical estimate of our case, I may observe that, however we may regret the degree in which our intellectual faculties are less active than the lower, we must beware of wishing that the case was reversed. If our affective faculties were subordinated to the intellectual, all idea of improving the social organism would be merely senseless. It would be like polishing our roads, instead of merely diminishing their friction, which would not improve the accustomed locomotion, but render its mechanism contradictory to the fundamental laws of motion. For our affective faculties must preponderate, not only to rouse our reason from its natural lethargy, but to give a permanent aim and direction to its activity, without which it would be for ever lost in vague abstract speculation. Even under our actual conditions, which subject the wildest reveries to more or less control of reality, we see how the most mystical efforts of pious ecstasy to conceive of an ideal state, exempt from organic wants and from all human passions, have issued, even in the highest minds, in conceptions of a sort of transcendental idiotcy, eternally absorbed in a foolish and almost stupid contemplation of the divine majesty. Our social organism is, then, what it ought to be, except as to degree; and we must observe and remember that it is in our power, within certain narrow limits, to rectify this degree of difference; or rather, that the rectification takes place in proportion to the steady development of civilization, which tends to subordinate our propensities to our reason, more and more, without giving us any cause to apprehend a reversal of the order at any future time.

The second consideration is that, besides the preponderance of the affective over the intellectual life, the lowest and most personal propensities have, in regard to social relations, an unquestionable preponderance over the nobler. According to the sound biological theory of man, our social affections are inferior in strength and steadiness to the

PERSONAL PROPENSITIES PREPONDERATE.

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personal, though the common welfare must depend especially on the regular satisfaction of the former, which first originate the social state for us, and then maintain it against the divergencies of individual instincts. To understand the sociological value of this biological datum, we must observe, as in the former case, that the condition is necessary, and that it is only its degree that we have to deplore. In analogy with the former case, personal instincts must give an aim and direction to our social action. All notions of public good must be based upon those of private advantage, because the former can be nothing else than that which is common to all cases of the latter and, under no ideal refinement of our nature, could we ever habitually desire for others anything else but what we wish for ourselves,--unless in those infinitely rare and very secondary cases in which an excessive refinement of moral delicacy, fostered by intellectual meditation, may enable a man to appreciate for another means of happiness which are of little or no value to himself. Our moral nature would then be destroyed, and not improved, if it were possible to repress our personal instincts, since our social affections, deprived of necessary direction, would degenerate into a vague and useless charity, destitute of all practical efficacy. When the morality of an advanced society bids us love our neighbours as ourselves, it embodies in the best way the deepest truth, with only such exaggeration as is required in the formation of a type, which is always fallen short of in practice. In this sublime precept, the personal instinct is the guide and measure of the social; and in no other way could the principle be presented; for in what respect and how could any one love another who did not love himself? Thus, again, we may be satisfied with the nature of Man, though not with the degree of his self-regards. We must regret that even in the best natures, the social affections are so overborne by the personal, as rarely to command conduct, in a direct way. In this sense, we may conceive, after a comparison of the two cases I have presented, that the sympathetic instinct and the intellectual activity are especially destined to compensate mutually their common social insufficiency. We may say, indeed, that if Man became more benevolent, that would

be equivalent in social practice to his being more intelligent, not only because he would put his actual intelligence to better use, but because it would not be so much absorbed by the discipline which it must be constantly imposing on the strong preponderance of the personal propensities. But the converse supposition is not less exact, though it is less appreciable; for all real intellectual development is finally equivalent, in regard to the conduct of life, to a direct augmentation of natural benevolence, both by strengthening Man's empire over his passions, and by refining the habitual sense of the reactions occasioned by various social contact. If we admit, in the first case, that no great intellect can duly expand without a certain amount of universal benevolence, by which alone it can have free impulse, a lofty aim, and large exercise; so, inversely, we cannot doubt that all noble intellectual expansion fortifies general sympathy, not only by casting out selfish instigations, but by inspiring a wise predilection in favour of social order, which may, notwithstanding its ordinary coldness, concur as fortunately in the maintenance of social harmony as dispositions which are more lively and less steady. The reciprocal connection of those two chief moderators of human life, intellectual activity and the social instinct, seems thus to be unquestionable: and the first function of universal morals, in regard to the individual, consists in increasing this double influence, the gradual extension of which constitutes the first spontaneous result of the general development of humanity. And the double opposition between Man's moral and material need of intellectual toil and his dislike of it, and again, between Man's need, for his own happiness, of the social affections, and the necessary subjection of these to his personal instincts, discloses the scientific germ of the struggle which we shall have to review, between the conservative and the reforming spirit; the first of which is animated by purely personal instincts, and the other by the spontaneous combination of intellectual activity with the various social instincts.

So much for the first statical division,-the Individual. Next, we must consider the Family.

As every system must be composed of elements of the

same nature with itself, the scientific spirit 2. The Family. forbids us to regard society as composed of

individuals. The true social unit is certainly the family,reduced, if necessary, to the elementary couple which forms its basis. This consideration implies more than the physiological truth that families become tribes, and tribes become nations: so that the whole human race might be conceived of as the gradual development of a single family, if local diversities did not forbid such a supposition. There is a political point of view from which also we must consider this elementary idea, inasmuch as the family presents the true germ of the various characteristics of the social organism. Such a conception is intermediate between the idea of the individual and that of the species, or society. There would be as many scientific inconveniences in passing it over in a speculative sense as there are dangers in practice in pretending to treat of social life without the inevitable preparation of the domestic life. Whichever way we look at it, this necessary transition always presents itself, whether in regard to elementary notions of fundamental harmony, or for the spontaneous rise of social sentiment. It is by this avenue that Man comes forth from his mere personality, and learns to live in another, while obeying his most powerful instincts. No other association can be so intimate as this primary combination, which causes a complete fusion of two natures in one. Owing to the radical imperfection of the human character, individual divergencies are too marked to admit of so close an association in any other case. The common experience of human life teaches us only too well that men must not live too familiarly together, if they are to bear, in mutual peace, the infirmities of our nature,—whether of the intellect or the affections. Even religious communities, united as they are by a special bond, were, as we know, perpetually tormented by internal dissensions, such as it is impossible to avoid if we attempt to reconcile qualities so incompatible as the intimacy and the extension of human relations. Even in the family, the intimacy is owing to the strong spontaneousness of the common end, combined with the equally natural institution of an indispensable subordination. Whatever talk there may be, in modern times, of social

equality, even the most restricted society supposes, not only diversities, but inequalities; for there can be no association without a permanent concurrence in a general operation, pursued by distinct means, mutually subordinated. Now, the most entire realization possible of these elementary conditions is inherent in the family alone, where nature has supplied all the requisites of the institution. Thus, notwithstanding the temporary abuse of the family spirit in the way of excess, which has occasionally brought reproach on the institution, it is, and will ever be, the basis of the social spirit, through all the gradual modifications which it may have to undergo in the course of the human evolution. The serious assaults upon this institution which we witness in our day must, therefore, be regarded as the most alarming symptoms of our temporary tendency to social disorganization. But such a direction of the revolutionary spirit is a dangerous system only on account of the decrepitude of the belief on which the idea of the Family, like every other social idea, is made to rest. As long as the family relation has no other intellectual basis than religious doctrine, it will share whatever discredit belongs to that doctrine in the present state of human development. The Positive philosophy, which reorganizes whatever it touches, can alone re-establish the conception on an immutable foundation, by transferring all social speculation from the region of vague ideality to the ground of indisputable reality.

The constitution of the human family has undergone modifications of a progressive kind which appear to me to disclose, at each epoch of development, the exact importance of the change wrought in the corresponding social state. Thus, the polygamy of less advanced nations must give a character to the family wholly different from that which it has among nations which are capable of that monogamy to which our nature tends. In the same way, the ancient family, which consisted partly of slaves, must be very unlike the modern, which is mainly reduced to the kindred of the couple, and in which the authority of the head is comparatively small. But the estimate of these modifications will find its right place in my historical review. Our object now is to consider the elementary scientific aspect of