Page images
PDF
EPUB

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, 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

[blocks in formation]

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 forbids us to 2. The Family. 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 inconveniencies 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 divergences 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 symptom 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

[blocks in formation]

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 the family; that aspect which is made common to all social cases by regarding the domestic as the basis of all social life. In this view, the sociological theory of the family is reducible to the investigation of two orders of relations, viz., the subordination of the sexes, which institutes the family, and that of ages, which maintains it. A certain amount of voluntary association takes place from that degree of the biological scale at which sex begins; and it is always occasioned by the sexual union first, and then by the rearing of progeny. If the sociological comparison must stop at the two great classes of superior animals, birds and mammifers, it is because none below them present a sufficiently complete realization of this double elementary character.

The sexual

We cannot too reverently admire that universal natural disposition, on which all association is grounded, by which, in the state of marriage, however imperfect, the relation. strongest instinct of our animal nature, at once satisfied and disciplined, occasions harmony instead of the disorder which would arise from its license. It was not to be expected that, when the revolutionary spirit was attacking everything else, it should allow marriage to escape,-connected as it has hitherto been with the theological philosophy. When the positive philosophy shall have established the subordination of the sexes, and in that, the principle of marriage and of the family, it will take its stand on an exact knowledge of human nature, followed by an appreciation of social development as a whole, and of the general phase which it now presents; and in doing this it will extinguish the fancies by which the institution is at present discredited and betrayed. No doubt Marriage, like every other human concern, undergoes modifications as human development proceeds. Modern marriage, as constituted by Catholicism, is radically different, in various respects, from Roman marriage, as that differed from the Greek, and both, in a much greater degree, from the Egyptian or Oriental, even after the establishment of monogamy. It is undisputed that these modifications have not come to any end, and that the great social reconstitution for which we are looking will establish the general character of the association, which all preceding modifications have progressively developed. Meantime, the absolute spirit of the existing political philosophy mistakes such modifications for an overthrow of the institution; a state of things very analogous to that of the ancient times, when the Greek philosophy was

about to make way for the Christian regeneration of the family and of society, and when fantastical errors, caused by the long intellectual interregnum, gave occasion to the famous satire of Aristophanes, which we may accept as a rude rebuke of our own licentiousness.

What the ultimate conditions of marriage will be, we cannot know as yet; and if we could, this is not the place to treat of them. It is enough for our purposes to be assured that they will be consonant with the fundamental principle of the institution, the natural subordination of the woman, which has reappeared under all forms of marriage, in all ages, and which the new philosophy will place on its right basis, a knowledge of the individual organism first, and then of the social organism. Biological philosophy teaches us that, through the whole animal scale, and while the specific type is preserved, radical differences, physical and moral, distinguish the sexes. Comparing sex with age, biological analysis presents the female sex, in the human species especially, as constitutionally in a state of perpetual infancy, in comparison with the other; and therefore more remote, in all important respects, from the ideal type of the race. Sociology will prove that the equality of the sexes, of which so much is said, is incompatible with all social existence, by showing that each sex has special and permanent functions which it must fulfil in the natural economy of the human family, and which concur in a common end by different ways, the welfare which results being in no degree injured by the necessary subordination, since the happiness of every being depends on the wise development of its proper nature.

We have seen that the preponderance of the affective faculties is less marked in Man than in the lower animals, and that a certain degree of spontaneous speculative activity is the chief cerebral attribute of humanity, as well as the prime source of the marked character of our social organism. Now, the relative inferiority of Woman in this view is incontestable, unfit as she is, in comparison, for the requisite continuousness and intensity of mental labour, either from the intrinsic weakness of her reason or from her more lively moral and physical sensibility, which are hostile to scientific abstraction and concentration. This indubitable organic inferiority of feminine genius has been confirmed by decisive experiment, even in the fine arts, and amidst the concurrence of the most favourable circumstances. As for any functions of government, the radical inaptitude of the female sex is there yet more marked, even in regard to the most elementary state, and limited to the guidance of the mere family, the nature of the task requiring, above everything, an indefatigable attention to an aggregate of complex relations, none of which must be neglected, while the mind must be independent of the passions; in short, reasonable. Thus, the

« PreviousContinue »