The family instinct is deeply seated, as it arose among animals more ancient than man; none the less it exhibits disturbances and aberrations in the human race capable of bringing about the extinction of peoples or nations. It is, however, strong enough to secure that man will persist in the future. Man certainly is a social animal, but the instinct impelling him towards union with his fellows is of recent origin. Such animal societies as are to be found among insects are not comparable with human associations. Among mammals, the nearest allies of man, the social instincts are developed only to a slight extent, and even the anthropoid apes show very little progress in this direction. Many of these creatures have shown in captivity the aptitude to become friendly with man or with other animals, and thus have displayed the beginnings of the capacity to form societies. But, in the wild condition, anthropoids live only in families, and these contain few individuals. As regards the social capacities of the chimpanzee Dr. Savage wrote:[126] “They cannot be called gregarious, seldom more than five, or ten at most, being found together. It has been said on good authority that they occasionally assemble in large numbers in gambols. My informant asserts that he saw once not less than fifty so engaged; hooting, screaming, and drumming with sticks on old logs, which is done in the latter case with equal facility by the four extremities.” We have little acquaintance with the social life of the anthropoids, but, so far as we know, these creatures present only the merest beginnings of the social instinct. Man has moved much beyond them in that direction. Even the lowest races and the most primitive of living peoples such as, for instance, the Bushmen or the aborigines of Australia, display a well-developed social instinct.[127] The universal presence of the social instinct among human beings would seem to afford the basis of a happy life. In the numerous attempts made to find a purely rational principle that may serve as the basis for morality without the intervention of supernatural sanction, abundant use has been made of man’s craving to live in association with his fellows. Those who have tried to deduce moral law from the essential constitution of man have relied largely upon the innate sympathy between man and his fellows. Such a line of argument is so common and has been employed so frequently that I need not spend much space in developing it. I shall limit myself to a few examples.