=123. The family.=--It is a law among all living beings to perpetuate their species. This law is among animals subject to no moral law. Yet are there certain species where between the male and female a kind of society is established; and with nearly all animals the attachment of the mother to her young, shows itself by most striking and touching proofs. But this maternal interest does not usually last beyond the time necessary to bring up the little ones and enable them to provide for themselves. Beyond this time, the offspring separate and disperse. They live their own life; the mother knows them no longer. As to the father, he has scarcely ever known them. Such are the domestic ties among animals: and, rude as they may be, one cannot help already recognizing and admiring in them the anticipated image of the family. The family in the human species has the same origin and the same end as in the animal species, namely, the perpetuation of the species; but in the former it is exalted and ennobled by additional sentiments: it is consecrated and sanctioned by laws of duty and right to which animals are absolutely incapable of rising. If we consider the history of the human race, we see the family rise progressively from a certain primitive state, which is not very far from the animal promiscuity, to the condition in which we see it to-day in most civilized countries. Among savage nations, marriages have little stability and duration: they are as easily broken as formed. Female dignity and modesty are scarcely known among them: woman is more a slave than a companion, and the freedom of morals has scarcely any limits. Yet is there no society where marriages are not subject to some sacred or civil formalities, which shows that savages, ignorant as we may suppose them to be, have a presentiment of duties which, under favorable circumstances, tend to purify and elevate the relations of the sexes. Later, in other societies, marriages take a more regular form and a more fixed character; yet, admitting polygamy, more or less, as among the ancients. In short, many circumstances have presided over the legal relations of the two sexes, before, through the natural progress of morals and Christian influence, monogamy became the almost universal law of the family in civilized countries. It has been seen, then, that as the moral sentiment became more refined, the family, as it exists to-day, became more closely related to the State; and it will always be safer, in order to establish the legitimacy of such an institution and secure for it due respect, to depend more on sentiment than on reasoning. Besides, the family is a natural result of the necessary relations which exist between mother, father, and child. It is the birth of the children which is the end and _raison d'être_ of the family.