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