But society slowly works for unselfishness. The love learned in the
family manifests itself in ever-widening circles; it must do so if
it is the genuine article. It works for neighbors and friends, then
for the poor and helpless of the community. Then it spreads to other
communities and nations. For genuine love recognizes no bounds of
time or place. Slowly we learn that we are our brother's keepers,
and that the brotherhood cannot stop short of the human race.
Goodness and kindness radiate from one, perhaps unknown, member of
the community to his fellows, and thence all over the world. And the
world is the better for his one action.
Primitive society was thus the best possible school of conscience;
and the family and it are the great school of unselfishness. But
society is even more and better than this. It is the medium through
which thought, power, and moral and religious life can spring from
man to man. This is its last and culminating advantage: it is that
for which society really exists.
For, in the close bonds of family and social life, a new possibility
of development has arisen based upon articulate speech. We might
almost call it a new form of heredity, independent of all
blood-relationship. Progress in anatomical structure in the animal
kingdom was slow, because any improvement could be transmitted only
to the direct descendants of its original possessor.
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