[Footnote A:  Seelye:  Christian Missions, p. 154.]

Even though a Lincoln may rise above his hereditary position or his surroundings, they are the school in which he is trained; the gymnasium in which his mental and moral fibre is strengthened.  Family and social life form thus the element of man’s environment by which he is mostly moulded, and to which he most naturally and completely conforms.  Let us therefore briefly trace the origin of this new element of man’s environment, and then notice the effect upon him of conformity to its laws, and see whither these would lead him.

We have already seen that intra-uterine development of the young was being carried ever farther by mammals, and we found one explanation of this in the fact that each mammalian egg represented a large amount of nutriment, and that the mammal had very little material to spare for reproduction.  Very possibly, too, the newly hatched mammals were exposed to even more numerous and greater dangers than the young of birds.  Even among lower mammals the young is feeble at birth.  But the human infant is absolutely helpless.  And the centre of its helplessness is its brain.  Its eyes and ears are comparatively perfect, but its perceptions are very dim.  Its muscles are all present, but it must very slowly and gradually learn to use them.  Its language is but a cry, its few actions reflex.  The new-born kitten may be just as helpless, but in a few weeks it will run and play and hunt, and after a few months can care for itself.  Not so the child.  It must be cared for during months and years before it can be given independence.  Its brain is so marvellously complex that it is finished as a thinking and willing and muscle-controlling mechanism only long after birth.  This means a period of infancy during which the young clings helplessly to the mother, who is its natural protector.  And during this period the mother and young have to be cared for and protected by the male.  And the period of infancy and the protection of the female and young are just as truly, though in far less degree, characteristic of the highest apes as of man.

I can give you only this very condensed and incomplete abstract of Mr. John Fiske’s argument; you must read it for yourself in his “Destiny of Man.”  And as he has there shown, this can have but one result, and that is the family life of man.  And we may yet very possibly have to acknowledge that family life of a very low grade is just as truly characteristic of the higher apes as of lower man.  And thus the family life of man is the physiological result of, and rooted in, mammalian structure.

And the benefits of family life are too great and numerous to even enumerate.  First of all the family is the school of unselfishness.  All the love of the parent is drawn out for the helpless and dependent child, and grows as the parent works and thinks for it.  And the child returns a fraction of his parents’ love.  Within the close bond of the family the struggle for place and opportunity is replaced by mutual helpfulness; and this doing and burden-bearing with and for each other is a constant exercise in the practice of love.  And with out this mutual love and helpfulness the family cannot exist.