ay be fitly summed up in
the statement that whereas in its rude beginnings the psychical life was
but an appendage to the body, in fully-developed Humanity the body is
but the vehicle for the soul.

IX.

The Origins of Society and of Morality.

One further point must be considered before this outline sketch of the
manner of man's origin can be called complete. The psychical development
of Humanity, since its earlier stages, has been largely clue to the
reaction of individuals upon one another in those various relations
which we characterize as social.[10] In considering the origin of Man,
the origin of human society cannot be passed over. Foreshadowings of
social relations occur in the animal world, not only in the line of our
own vertebrate ancestry, but in certain orders of insects which stand
quite remote from that line. Many of the higher mammals are gregarious,
and this is especially true of that whole order of primates to which we
belong. Rudimentary moral sentiments are also clearly discernible in the
highest members of various mammalian orders, and in all but the lowest
members of our own order. But in respect of definiteness and permanence
the relations between individuals in a state of gregariousness fall far
short of the relations between individuals in the rudest human society.
The primordial unit of human society is the family, and it was by the
establishment of definite and permanent family relationships that the
step was taken which raised Man socially above the level of gregarious
apehood. This great point was attained through that lengthening of the
period of helpless childhood which accompanied the gradually increasing
intelligence of our half-human ancestors. When childhood had come to
extend over a period of ten or a dozen years--a period which would be
doubled, or more than doubled, where several children were born in
succession to the same parents--the relationships between father and
mother, brethren and sisters, must have become firmly knit; and thus the
family, the unit of human society, gradually came into existence.[11]
The rudimentary growth of moral sentiment must now have received a
definite direction. As already observed, with the beginnings of infancy
in the animal world there came the genesis in the parents of feelings
and actions not purely self-regarding. Rudimentary sympathies, with
rudimentary capacity for self-devotion, are witnessed now and then among
higher mammals, suc