The family / by Helen Bosanquet.

  • Helen Bosanquet
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The family / by Helen Bosanquet. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/360 page 5
    I INTEODUCTOKY 5 who have reflected upon it, has varied even more than its extent. Some find in it mainly an institu¬ tion for the care of the children, whose state of helplessness is prolonged so far beyond that of the offspring of other animals ; and there has probably never been a time, when in a greater or less degree, and more or less consciously, the Family has not achieved this object.^ Others, again, say that its original purpose was for the sake of the parents and ancestors, that their cult might be preserved ; and there have certainly been long periods of time amongst great peoples when this motive seems to have been the predominant one. Others, again, main¬ tain that it had its origin in private property and was organised for purposes of inheritance ; while others yet again find in it only a device whereby the man is enabled to turn the labour of wife and child to his own account. To some it is the ex¬ pression of a religion, indeed one of the most primitive and ultimate of all religions ; to others a merely material phenomenon, explicable entirely on economic grounds. The origin of justice, the source of law, the fountain of morality, the necessary prelude to the State, the most formidable rival to the State, a merely passing phase in the development of civilisation, an essential condition in all stages of human progress; all these the Family has been held to be, and for nearly all views some justification may be found in past or present. It does not, of course, follow that these aspects ^ I am aware that this proposition has been disputed, but see p. 36.
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